


Under the Surface

by PistachioWritings



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Angst, CW: mental illness, M/M, but also some fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 25,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PistachioWritings/pseuds/PistachioWritings
Summary: Nobody believes Detective Tonner when she catches the scent of a serial killer. Nobody, that is, except the killer himself. And when a killer falls in love, complications tend to arise...
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 95
Kudos: 206





	1. A Collection of Nothings

_“I’m sorry, Detective Tonner, there’s just not enough evidence indicating these cases are related. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I can’t in good conscience support this kind of investigation without more evidence.”_

Daisy unceremoniously dropped her worn leather messenger bag on the coffee-stained library table as she repeated her captain’s words in her mind. He’d tried to let her down easy, but it was abundantly clear what he thought of her: just an overenthusiastic new detective trying to impress her superiors. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but she wouldn’t have brought up her theory if she didn’t think it would go anywhere. 

“More evidence,” she mumbled under her breath, irritated. What more evidence did he want? She had a pattern, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Over ten unsolved disappearances, each preceded by a stalking complaint, and each with disturbingly similar and unusual aspects. Yet the had all gone uninvestigated due to an overwhelming lack of evidence. Her whole theory was held together by the fact that there was no evidence. 

She pulled out her laptop and was about to look back through what little she had when she was approached by a small man with a name tag that simply read ‘Jon.’ He was dressed casually, though his high necked sweater suggested familiarity with higher academia. His mannerisms were contained. His shoulders had the stiffness of someone suffering from chronic stress, but he walked smoothly and with seemingly effortless confidence. Under the dark circles of insomnia, his green eyes held a spark of intelligence far beyond what was necessary for a man of his profession. “Can I help you find anything, ma’am?” 

“Yes, actually,” she said, quickly scribbling down a short list of names on a piece of scrap paper and handing it to him. “Do you have anything that mentions any of these people?” It was a long shot, but she could use all the help she could get.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He smiled gently before turning and disappearing into the depths of the library. One of the reasons Daisy had chosen to go to the public library was because it had a copy of pretty much every public document from the city’s history. She had done her research, but there wasn’t much to find in the official police database. Hopefully, she would have better success with a wider range of resources.

Only a couple minutes later, Jon returned with a small stack of yellowing newspapers and thin cold case files. “Here’s everything I could find. It’s not much, but I’ll keep an eye out and tell you if I run into anything else.” The files he brought spanned almost a decade and Daisy was more than impressed with his speed. She opened the folder on top and started skimming its contents. She was just about to dive into her project when Jon spoke again. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you working on?”

The question was unexpected, but it wasn’t unusual. After a lifetime of low-level law enforcement and natural introversion, Daisy wasn’t used to people paying her more attention than they had to. She hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to share her suspicions. She had been trained to keep investigations more or less secret from the public, but she didn’t have anything confidential in her notes. So what harm could it be? “It’s nothing official, really,” she said cautiously, “but I’m convinced that these cases are connected. The captain doesn’t think there’s anything there, but there are too many coincidences for my taste.”

“What do you have so far?” Jon leaned against the table and picked up one of the case files, flipping through it. The movement was casual, more like he was part of the library than just an employee.

“Nothing, apparently,” she scoffed. “Just a bunch of cold cases with almost nothing in common except the, well, the weirdness.” She shuffled through the papers Jon had brought, distracted. “All these people seemed to just disappear and nobody knows how or why.” Her voice trailed off as she lost herself in her thoughts. 

“What do you mean by weirdness?”

“I can’t really describe it. Everybody the police talked to in each case said the victims got really paranoid in the couple months before they disappeared. A lot of them even filed stalking complaints. The problem though is that none of them went very far due to the lack of evidence.” Daisy paused in thought, then shook her head. “Nothing,” she whispered to herself. “They had nothing then and I have nothing now. Gah, there might be a literal serial killer out there, and I’ve got nothing!”

“Huh,” Jon mused, evidently unfazed by Daisy’s vexation. He still wasn’t looking at her directly. “That’s not much. You might be right about the whole serial killer thing, but your theory really won’t go anywhere without more evidence. It’s too…” he gestured about with his free hand, “vague.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Daisy huffed, exasperated more by the situation than the unhelpful advice. “I’m hoping I can find some more connections in these files. If I’m right, whoever did this must be pretty messed up. I mean, it looks like there’s no pattern in victimology at all. Different races, genders, classes, this guy doesn’t have a type.”

They were both silent for a moment. “Interesting. You could be on to something, but you’re thinking too narrowly. Appearances and occupations aren’t the only things that define a person.” Jon’s voice didn’t hold much emotion, but his words got Daisy’s gears turning. He set down the file he had been looking at. “Anyways, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”

Daisy watched in confused wonder as he walked off to go offer his help to a group of students that had just walked in. He was a strange man, she thought. He’d found a pile of obscure documents about a bunch of historical nobodies from multiple years within minutes, gave some insightful advice, and then just walked off. Not that she was complaining, it would have taken hours for her to find all those documents on her own and even longer to come up with that idea about the victims’ connection. No wonder he had a reputation as the best librarian in the city.

She looked back down at the new stack of papers in front of her, considering Jon’s words. What other similarities could she find? To call the official investigations lacking would be overstating their usefulness. None of the victims had ever done anything notable, not to mention newsworthy. There wasn’t much for her to go off of. It didn’t help either that, other than the unusual circumstances of their disappearances, none of the victims had anything in common. Rich, poor, educated, illiterate, black, white, gay, straight, and everything in between. Her killer, if he even existed, crossed every categorical line she could think of. Whatever their connection, she wasn’t going to find it on the surface.

Jon was right, she would have to look into these people’s details. Pulling the pile of papers towards her, she set her fingers to the keys on her laptop and began her search.


	2. More than a Reputation

“Focus, Martin, focus!” Martin smacked his head quietly with his open palm as he hissed admonishingly to himself. He was supposed to be writing an essay for class, something about Dostoyevski’s use of metaphor in _Crime and Punishment,_ but staying on track was becoming increasingly difficult. If only he hadn’t chosen the one place in town where he was guaranteed to be distracted. 

For anybody else, the public library would be an excellent place to study. Next to winding passages between high shelves of dusty books sit worn and water-stained tables where students can be found spending long nights over heavy books and forgotten cups of cold tea. It may have been continually overlooked by government funding, but the old stone building and its aging collection of knowledge exuded an air of serenity that made it quite popular amongst those who seek a calm place to work. Not to mention the library’s extensive assortment of texts and public files concerning nearly every subject imaginable. And the unofficial master of this literary lot, Jon.

Jon had become something of a legend within certain circles. Supposedly he had read every last scrap of paper in the library and had the whole of the collection memorized. That’s what the local gossips would have you believe, at least. Most of it is likely just drunken exaggerations, but there’s no doubt as to his efficiency. The library and its archives can be rather difficult to navigate at times, but if there’s one person who can find exactly what you need in the blink of an eye, it’s Jon. If you need something the library doesn’t have, he knows where to find it, and if not, he’d at least be able to point you in the right direction. Practically every student who’s taken advantage of the public library has sought his expertise at least once, and the vast majority have been quite pleased with the result. Reputations like his don’t just appear out of nothing.

This reputation was what first drew Martin to him. A classmate had recommended the kindly expert a while back when Martin had confessed to struggling with a research paper. Going back to school after dropping out so many years ago had been a difficult transition for him, but he was committed to keeping on top of his grades, and with Jon’s help he had aced that first assignment. Accepting help, even help he asked for, was still a lesson Martin hadn’t fully learned, but he was working on it. The schoolwork itself was something he had to do alone, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn to appreciate the people and resources available to him.

Soon, the public library became his go-to place for when he needed to focus. Jon certainly lived up to his helpful reputation, and the building’s atmosphere was perfectly inspiring for his schoolwork as well as his personal poetry. There was something else about it though. The diminutive, unassuming librarian was more than just a useful resource. The man was intriguing. And if he was being completely honest, Martin found him very attractive. He hated to admit it, but that was the real reason why he kept coming back.

And now it was becoming an inconvenience. An incredibly pleasant one that left him with butterflies in his stomach, but still an inconvenience. How was he supposed to write when he kept catching sight of Jon in the corner of his eye? The kind smile with which he greeted every new patron, the spark in his eye when he left to go find something, the gentle but firm way he held each stack of books he carried, they distracted Martin. He was trying to focus on his essay, but his eyes kept drifting back to those long, academically calloused fingers that he so desperately wanted to hold in his own, that skin he knew must be so soft despite all the scars…

“Good afternoon, Martin. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Martin looked up with a start to see Jon standing by his desk, his intoxicating green eyes watching him expectantly. Had he been staring? Martin blinked rapidly, trying to reorganize his thoughts. “Um, n- no, uh, n- no thank you,” he stuttered. 

Jon smiled and nodded wordlessly before stepping away.

“Wait!” Martin exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly, as he grabbed Jon’s hand. The skin was soft over the thin, bony fingers, clearly well used and well cared for. Jon stopped and turned back, a look of gentle confusion on his sallow but charming features. He didn’t pull away. Martin swallowed and let go, embarrassed by his sudden outburst. “How do you know my name?”

“What do you mean?” Jon’s voice was warm, tinted with a subtle bemusement. “You’re here at least every week. It would be imprudent of me not to learn the names of my regulars, would it not?” He smiled as he turned to leave once again, this time letting his fingertips linger on the edge of Martin’s table just ever so slightly longer than was necessary. Was that intentional?

Martin’s heart fluttered and he felt almost dizzy. He watched Jon walk back into the mass of people who’d filled the room since Martin had arrived. It was a busy afternoon, likely due to the closeness of finals week at the nearby schools, but the expert librarian handled the crowd with ease. He flitted from table to table like a moth, occasionally stopping for a few seconds of polite conversation or disappearing into the depths of the bookshelves, always quickly returning with a stack of both aging and fresh texts and a kind smile. Martin was impressed by his seemingly unending patience. Stress tended to be high and tempers short this time of year, yet Jon never broke a sweat. It made Martin wonder if Jon was even capable of anger. He couldn’t picture it. 

He tried to focus on his essay, and he did manage to get some work done before the sun sank too far beneath the horizon, but he kept looking back. Kept stealing glances. Kept gazing hopelessly at the man whose face filled his dreams. What was it about Jon that enraptured him so? Was it his creativity and insight, the way he always knew the right thing to say when somebody was struggling? Maybe it was his warm smile, his gentle hands, the way he treated everything he touched like it deserved the utmost respect. Martin didn’t know; he couldn’t figure it out. All he knew was that he felt warm whenever Jon was around, and it was a feeling he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of.


	3. Behind the Mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, the first bit is somewhat gruesome. I know I've got it tagged already, but this is the first chapter where it actually gets violent, so I wanted to make an extra note of it. Otherwise, this is the last of the introductory chapters, so we can get into some good plot stuff soon! Enjoy!

The video is grainy, blurry. The angle is bad. The camera’s view is focused on the corner of the room rather than the subject of the video, as if it had been carelessly knocked and not repositioned. In the center of the room is a table. The room is dim and starkly empty but for the table stained with something unsettlingly dark and the tall lamp pointed at it like a makeshift spotlight, crudely reminiscent of old surgeons’ theaters. An appropriate parallel, considering the state of the figure strapped to the surface of the table. His face is cut out of the frame, but his bare torso is as clear as it can be through the grainy film. If it could still be considered a torso at this point, that is. Long, deep gashes score his entire body. The wounds are concentrated around the soft tissue of the abdomen, but cuts can be seen on all of his extremities, exposing the tough, stringy muscle that hides beneath the skin. They each bubble with thick red liquid, pooling on the table around him and leaving his heavy leather restraints slick with blood. He’s screaming. 

Above the table stands a young man covered in almost as much blood as the man on the table. He’s holding a long knife in one hand. It glistens in the lamplight like the sharp teeth of a beast in the night. The other hand he plunges into the newest aperture in his victim’s abdomen. He looks up with almost childlike excitement at the man’s face as he does this, clearly watching as the man’s writhing and screaming intensify. The mass of gore that used to be a man struggles weakly against his belted fetters, losing energy with every passing second. The man with the knife laughs savagely at this and twists his arm deeper into the wound. Rather than grow louder, however, the man’s screams begin to fade. Soon he goes still and falls silent. Dead.

His killer pauses in confusion, looking back and forth uncomprehending between the dead man’s face and where he’s still elbow-deep in the man’s stomach. He wrenches his arm from the wound, dripping with sticky scarlet gore. The sadistic joy on his face falls away and is replaced with a look of disappointment. He stabs the dead man, searching for a reaction. Nothing. He stabs him again, his disappointment transforming into a deep rage. Still nothing. A third time. Suddenly he stiffens and looks down slowly in horror as the realization hits him. He stares blankly at his blood-soaked hands. The knife tumbles unceremoniously to the floor, forgotten as he stumbles backwards.

He backs into the corner, now in the center of the camera’s gaze, his victim still oozing blood passively in the foreground. His breathing appears to be labored as his back hits the wall and he slides to the floor, his eyes never leaving the blood and flesh dripping from his shaking hands. Tears gather and threaten to fall as he sits there in terrified silence. But then he begins to laugh. It starts as a nervous giggle, the movement so similar to crying. A mad grin plays coldly on his lips as his cachinnations grow. He sits otherwise motionless as his laughter becomes louder and more violent until he runs out of noise and is left heaving with silent unstable delirium. He holds his head in his disgusting hands, grasping his long dark hair with his gory fingers, staining his scalp red with the other man’s blood. He looks up abruptly, directly into the camera. He’s shaking and breathless with hysteria. His eyes are wild, inhuman. 

Then the video cuts to static.

The face of the crazed young man in the video was now reflected in the glass of the screen with just the slightest hint of a satisfied smile. It was older now and more scarred, but the face itself hadn’t much changed in the past decade. Jon stared back at his reflection in the static. He had matured, but he hadn’t changed.

He ejected the tape and put it back in the desk drawer with the others. It was labeled _'Ryan Bradford'_ in red ink. The others all were labeled in kind, with the name of the subject in red ink on the side. There were no dates, those were inconsequential. What mattered was the content, not the context, and Ryan had been the first. He had fifteen videos in total, one for each victim. In this age of technology, Jon felt it was safer to keep them on tape. Harder to hack. 

Not that he was worried about being hacked. All his many cameras were cleverly hidden, closed circuit, and the video was all deleted after 24 hours. All the video, that is, except his tapes. His kills. Those he liked to go back to. To watch again. To relive.

Ryan was his first and, for some reason, his favorite. Jon didn’t know why. It was messy and it was risky. Ryan had met him, the only one of his victims who could have identified him if given the chance. The only one he could possibly be connected to. But the man was dead now, and Jon wasn’t worried. The dead keep their secrets. It was more than clear in the video that he’d been a bit out of his right mind when he killed Ryan, a little over-emotional, but it had also been the most passionate. He hadn’t yet developed the obsessive technique that now controlled his every action. It was the most fun, he remembered with a cold smile. Nothing would ever match the thrill of that first hunt, that first kill. What they say about addictions is true: the first hit is always the best. 

And it really was an addiction. Like any other drug, he wasn’t sure he was able to quit. After each kill, he swore it would be the last, but without fail he always found himself watching someone new. That itch in the back of his skull never went away. He could ignore it for a while, put it off, but he couldn’t make it go away.

He looked up at the other screens in his office. There were at least ten, each mounted to the wall and constantly streaming black and white surveillance video. At present they were dedicated to the 24/7 live feed from every camera he’d installed to watch his current target. Emilee Wilcox. She was a 26-year-old financial advisor who lived in a small apartment by herself. Her favorite food was the fried rice from a little locally owned Chinese food restaurant, she did laundry every Friday night, she slept on the left side of the bed facing the window, and recently, the poor girl had become convinced that someone was watching her. Tax season can be very stressful for a young financial advisor, and unfounded paranoia isn’t an uncommon side effect of intense stress. 

Too bad, Jon mused as he watched her on the screen. If only someone believed her. He could still feel the heat in his blood, leftover excitement from reliving Ryan’s death. He’d been watching his recordings more frequently recently, a sure sign he was running out of patience. He’d managed to avoid it for a while, but he could feel the need to kill building inside of him. Watching his victims, voyeuristically observing the meager, unimpressive lives that meant so much to them, it was fun for a time, but every toy eventually wears out. And Emilee was starting to wear.

Jon mindlessly scratched his arm with one hand while he sifted through a small stack of photographs with the other. The scratching was a nasty habit he’d picked up years ago that often left him with discolored scars, a physical manifestation of the itching feeling in his mind. His limbs were covered with the patchy evidence of skin that had grown back wrong after too many layers had been unthinkingly peeled away. The photographs were a more intentional habit, though he knew it was still just as unhealthy. Some were screen-caps from his video feed, others he’d taken in person. None of them had been consensual. He knew the half-obscured pictures of Emilee were somewhat unsavory in the eyes of the law, but what did the law care about him?

Currently, Emilee was in her car, blissfully unaware of the tiny camera watching from a corner of the dashboard. She pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex and turned off the engine. When she left the car, she moved out of view of that particular camera, but Jon could still see her from the camera on the lamppost and, soon, the one above her front door. There was at least one camera in each room of her small apartment, and he watched her move around, going through the motions of an average life. She thought she was alone.

Or at least, she did until she found the gift Jon had left on her kitchen table. A little photograph similar to the ones on his desk, a picture from when she had dinner with her friends the night before. He’d left it there while she was at work. How unfortunate for her that somebody had fixed the locks on her windows so they didn’t lock when she turned the latch. When she saw the photograph, she was visibly shaken. She had her back to Jon’s camera, but he could easily imagine her face, wide-eyed and gasping. 

Jon sat motionless and expressionless as he watched her panic, a grim fascination the only evidence of life behind his eyes. He silently considered his handiwork. With a single photograph, he had been able to almost incapacitate her. Sometimes he impressed even himself with his skill in manipulating people’s fears. Fear is one of the most base emotions, he believed, and arguably the most powerful. The smallest amount of fear can save a life or it can start a war. It causes a visceral reaction, leads people to make decisions they’d otherwise never consider. And it was the most powerful weapon in Jon’s arsenal.

Suddenly he was ripped from his voyeuristic contemplations by the loud alarm ringing from his phone. Time to go to work. Time to put on his face, to return to society, to respectability. A splash of cold water and he’d be ready to go. It was easy by now, almost second nature to pretend. Emotions had never been his area of expertise, but lying was. 

****

Later that afternoon, Jon remembered exactly how bad he was at understanding his emotions on the rare occasion that they were strong enough to push through his carefully crafted walls. He was making his rounds of the library when he saw him again. Martin. The boy with the curly red hair and the freckles like constellations. The one that made his throat close up when he got too near. It was confusing. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about him?

And now Martin was staring at him. Was he trying to distract him? The library was getting busy, but he couldn’t concentrate when those mist-colored eyes were following him. He couldn’t stand it. Jon was supposed to be the watcher, not the watched. 

For a while, he tried to ignore it. He tried to push Martin from his mind, but he couldn’t seem to do it. The only way he was going to be able to regain control of the situation was to confront the man directly. Politely, he excused himself from the group of aspiring historians he was helping and made his way towards the table in the back of the room where Martin sat ignoring the paper he was clearly supposed to be writing.

“Good afternoon, Martin. Is there anything I can help you with?”

His words were intentionally soft and unassuming, but the boy jumped nearly a foot. Jon almost felt bad for scaring him so. Almost. When Martin stuttered out something Jon took as a no, he was satisfied that there was nothing more going on than was appropriate.

As he was turning to leave though, Martin shouted for him to wait and grasped his wrist. At the contact, Jon stiffened almost imperceptibly and his breath caught in his throat. His chest tightened and a shiver ran down his spine. He wanted to run, to get as far away from whatever was happening as possible, but something stopped him. What did he want?

“How do you know my name?” Martin sounded genuinely confused, like the idea that Jon might know who he was had never crossed his mind. 

“What do you mean?” Jon turned back, his mask of congeniality never faltering despite his confusion. “You’re here at least every week. It would be imprudent of me not to learn the names of my regulars, would it not?” It was the truth. He did make an effort to at least know the names of the people who frequented the library, even if he couldn’t care less about who they were. It was important to keep up appearances. 

Martin was different though. There was something about him that Jon couldn’t place. Something stirred in Jon whenever he was around, but it wasn’t the cold apathy he felt towards most people he encountered, nor was it the morbid, obsessive curiosity he felt when he identified his next victim. When he turned to step away once again, he trailed his fingertips across the edge of Martin’s desk unconsciously. He was lost in thought. 

Jon did not like Martin. The young poet’s soft features and genuine expressions frustrated Jon. They were real and Jon was not. They made his chest hurt. It was easier to ignore them. Safer. He couldn’t afford such painful distractions. Instead, he decided to throw himself into his work, both at the library and at home. If he focused hard enough on dealing with stressed university students or on planning the next steps in his little extracurricular project, just maybe he’d be able to push Martin from his mind. All he wanted was a moment’s peace. Was that too much to ask?


	4. Only Delusions

“So, what’s on the docket today, Detective?” Jon was inspecting one of the photos Daisy had pinned to her evidence board. It was a driver’s license picture of Kaitlyn Childress, a university student who’d disappeared from her apartment about three years ago. 

“Not much, just going over the case files. Again,” Daisy sighed. She hadn’t made much progress in her off-duty investigations since she had started nearly three weeks ago. The most recent victim she could identify had gone missing nearly a year ago, and the search had been abandoned relatively quickly. They didn’t have anybody to miss them and there hadn’t been any evidence of foul play, so Daisy wasn’t hopeful that any helpful new evidence would turn up soon. 

She had, however, gotten an upgrade in her setup. The week before, Jon had given her the keys to one of the private study rooms in the library. Classes were officially over for the semester and the study rooms didn’t get much traffic during the summer, according to Jon, so he had offered it as a sort of makeshift office where she could work undisturbed. It wasn’t much, but it had a whiteboard and a large table where she was able to spread out her files or take notes. And it was locked, so she could leave her things there overnight instead of having to haul the heavy boxes of files back and forth between her house and the library.

Daisy was grateful for Jon’s help. So far, he was the only person who took more than just a passive interest in her work. He’d helped her to set up her evidence board and made sure she had all the materials she needed. Occasionally he would drop in to help with the busy work or give a fresh perspective when she’d been staring at the same thing for too long. He was almost as good as the team she would have if it were an official case.

During her investigations, she had scoured the cold case files, read through the victims’ social media accounts, and even re-interviewed some of the witnesses. Her biggest lead so far was something overlooked by the official investigations: the paranoia itself. The law has a tendency to write people off as crazy when they can’t produce evidence to support their wild claims. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes cases aren’t investigated as much as they should be and potentially significant connections between cases aren’t even considered. 

What Daisy _had_ discovered was that the specifics of the victims’ paranoias were more similar than she had initially expected. Aside from the constant sense of being watched, a feeling not too uncommon on its own, she found that each victim made references to finding pictures of themselves left in their homes. Pictures that, when they went to show them to somebody else, had mysteriously disappeared. One victim claimed to have actually taken photos of them on his phone, only to find that they had been deleted by the morning.

But, however interesting it may have been, the lead was an unfruitful one. Even if every word of what she had found was true, she wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. In addition to the lack of any physical evidence whatsoever, there’d been no mention of anything even remotely resembling a sighting of her quarry, much less a description. There was nothing practical she could use.

“Have you had any luck figuring out a victim pattern for this, what did you call him, ceaseless something-or-other?” 

“It’s the Ceaseless Watcher, and no. Not yet.” Daisy was frustrated by the slow going and she was too tired to try to hide it. Working what was essentially double shifts every day with nothing to show for it was starting to take its toll on her. She was exhausted, and if she didn’t make any breakthroughs soon, she would have to move her case to the back-burner for a while. And that was an act she hoped to avoid, out of a sense of moral obligation if nothing else.

Jon made a noise of understanding, though Daisy wasn’t quite sure how to interpret its tone. He turned from where he had been studying the evidence board. “Remind me again, why did you decide to call him that? Don’t you think it sounds a bit, well, fantastical?”

“If anything, he named himself,” she huffed. “The epithet was one of the few things that was consistent across most of the victims’ statements. Apparently he’d occasionally leave them notes signed ‘the Ceaseless Watcher,’” Daisy made air quotes as she said this. “So don’t blame me for the weird name.”

Jon smiled at this and might even have laughed, though the sound was quiet enough that Daisy couldn’t be sure. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It does sound rather intimidating, it’s just odd.” The strange yet intelligent librarian was almost as much a mystery to her as was the Ceaseless Watcher. “Would you like my help going over the evidence?”

“Sure, why not. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

Pulling a chair up to the table, Jon sat down and picked up one of Daisy’s many notepads. She watched as he silently skimmed the notes, insecurity whispering in her ear about her nearly illegible handwriting. If he thought anything about it though, he didn’t mention it, instead diving straight into his informal interview. “Let’s start with what we know. Who were the victims?”

Daisy took a deep breath and tried to focus on the facts. “We know of ten, though I suppose there could be more. It’s hard to tell with so little evidence. And as far as we can see, they have no surface connections to each other. There are no consistencies in appearance nor any similarities in occupation or lifestyle. They have nothing in common.”

“Wrong,” Jon said flatly. “If they had nothing in common, they wouldn’t be on your list.”

Daisy sighed. She knew he was right. “Okay, fine. They all filed complaints against a mysterious, unknown stalker, then disappeared a few months later. But that's it,” she said, a hint of sarcastic bitterness creeping into her voice.

“Alright, then focus on the complaints. What made them significant? Surely it’s not all that uncommon for stalking victims to disappear.”

“It’s not, but it’s all just too similar to be coincidence. They all reported multiple nonviolent break-ins where small things would be moved or taken, only to be replaced a few days later. They also supposedly found small handwritten notes or unsettling black and white photos of themselves left in their homes, but nobody besides the victims ever saw them. Nothing important or expensive was ever taken though, and security cameras didn’t show anything unusual.”

“Was there any actual evidence of these break-ins?”

“No. There was no sign of forced entry on doors or windows and the things the Ceaseless Watcher reportedly left always disappeared before anybody besides the victims saw them.” Daisy scowled at nothing in particular and clenched her teeth in frustration. “All of it is just the mad rantings of people who are probably dead by now! Don’t you see why I’m so frustrated? There’s no way to prove any of it is true. I could learn every detail of their paranoias, but without any physical evidence this case isn’t going anywhere!”

“No, no, I understand,” Jon said calmly, still reading over Daisy’s notes rather than looking directly at her. “Now, what about the disappearances themselves?”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “you’re the detective. Why did they give up looking so quickly? Is there anything significant about when or from where they disappeared? It’s possible that the _way_ they were kidnapped could give some insight into your killer’s psyche.”

Daisy was surprised, though by now she shouldn’t have been. Once again Jon had directed her towards an angle of the case she previously hadn’t considered. “Oh my god, you’re right,” she whispered, suddenly flipping back through the files with a renewed energy. “I’ve been so focused on the tangible evidence that I forgot to even take into account how he thinks.” Daisy picked up a pencil and started scribbling on the nearest notepad. “Other than the gaslighting and the kidnapping, he seems very hands-off. Not once has anything he done affected anyone that wasn’t a victim. He’s secretive. His victims disappear from their homes without a trace and no bodies have been found, meaning he’s organized, intelligent, and extremely detail-oriented.” She paused and looked up, her face softening. “Thank you, Jon. I’ll need some time to really dig into this, but you don’t know how helpful you’ve been.”

She smiled at him genuinely and he responded in kind. “Glad I could help.” He set down the notes he’d been holding and stood to leave. “Now go catch a killer.”


	5. A Proposition

Martin closed his eyes and rolled onto his back, clutching his notebook to his chest with a self-conscious passion. He stared up at the slowly spinning blades of the ceiling fan above his bed. Their repetitive swirling matched the pattern of his thoughts, revolving about a fixed point that he couldn’t push from his mind and creating a cool breeze that sent a pleasant shiver down his spine. 

The notebook was filled with short poems of a very personal nature. Love poems about a certain man who haunted his dreams. Poems that he swore would never see the light of day. They were the hasty scribblings of a fluttering heart, emotional flareups that threatened to knock him out if he didn’t write them down. Martin knew they were terrible; it was hard to focus on technique when his brain was so fogged with emotion. 

Jon was all he could think about. Since classes were over, he didn’t have a good excuse to go to the library so often. No good excuse to see Jon. And the more time he went without seeing him, the stronger his longing grew. It was getting to the point where he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the shadow of those absinthe-green eyes, that long, dark hair with the streaks of silver that shone like the metal itself, those gentle burn-scarred fingertips that had lingered so lightly on his desk. The action had been so small, so short as to be nearly insignificant, but the scene had lodged itself firmly in Martin’s memory. Had it been intentional? Did Jon feel the same way about him? It was a long shot, but Martin was tired of the uncertainty. He had to know. 

He glanced over at the clock. It was the middle of the afternoon, meaning he knew exactly where to find Jon. He tried not to think about how Jon might react if he found out Martin had his work schedule memorized. He justified it by telling himself it was just a result of how often he used the library the rest of the year; he didn’t want to admit it was because he paid extra attention to whether or not Jon was there with him.

Martin returned the notebook and pencil to his backpack where they belonged, struggling to push the ever-lurking self-doubt from his mind. Those horrid susurrations in his skull told him terrible things: that he wasn’t good enough, that he was just fabricating the idea that Jon might like him, that he wasn’t worthy of even a potential relationship. He could feel himself falling back into his old patterns of self-hatred. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but the same fears that had plagued him for years just kept coming back. That old need to isolate was calling to him again.

“Shut up, shut up!” he hissed to himself. He smacked his temple with his open palm as if he could manually force the thoughts from his head. It didn’t exactly work the way he wanted it to, it never does, but at least he was able to refocus a little bit. Even if his mental illnesses were right, it was better to know for sure than to wallow in the depressing what-ifs. He wasn’t about to let them win again.

****

The library was quiet when Martin got there. He could see no more than five other people scattered around the large main room of the building, significantly less than the thirty to fifty he was used to. It made him a bit nervous, not having the anonymity that comes with a crowd. Across the room he spotted Jon leaving the only occupied private study room, stopping at the door to exchange a few last words with the woman sitting with her back to the window. 

When Jon looked up, it was obvious that he noticed Martin instantly. They met eyes and Martin’s heart skipped a beat. He realized in that moment that he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say. The same fears from earlier were starting to creep back into the light.

“Hello, Martin,” Jon greeted him, wearing his usual friendly smile. “What brings you in today?”

Martin felt suddenly dizzy. He took a deep breath and tried to steel himself against the flood of anxiety. “Actually, um, Jon,” he stuttered, “I’m here for, uh, for you.” He could feel his face flushing with embarrassment, and the heat in his cheeks only made it worse.

“For me?” Jon looked a bit taken aback, though his smile never faltered. 

Martin let out a quiet, nervous laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I was wondering if, if you wanted to, uh, go on a, er, get coffee?” His words were slow, careful, and he looked away as he spoke, watching Jon’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. “With me, I mean. Next Saturday?”

Jon was silent for a few seconds, though to Martin the silence seemed to stretch on for hours as he waited for a response. The smile had fallen and Martin was suddenly worried he had done something wrong. He’d just started to internally berate himself for being so idiotically obtuse when Jon finally spoke.

“Y- yes.” The single word was so quiet, so hesitant. Jon was nearly expressionless as he said it and walked away quickly before Martin could respond. 

He watched him go, his mind spinning. Did that really just happen? Martin’s heart caught in his throat. He stood completely motionless for almost five minutes as he tried to process everything. He had just asked the man of his dreams on a date, and he said yes! He felt like he was going to pass out. It might have been awkward, clumsy, the opposite of elegant, but Jon agreed to get coffee with him. On Saturday. At… at…

Shit! Martin realized with a start that they hadn’t agreed on a place to meet. Or a time of day, for that matter. Jon had already left the room and Martin didn’t want to try to hunt him down lest he look too desperate. He glanced around uncertainly, trying to formulate a solution. He didn’t have Jon’s phone number, so he couldn’t text him, and he didn’t want to just go and hope for the best, he needed to leave a note of some sort… yes! A note!

Martin scurried over to the library’s front desk. It looked like either Jon was working alone this afternoon or the other librarian was busy because the desk was unmanned. He quickly spotted a blank sticky-note pad and a pen. He scratched out a short message with the address of his favorite coffee shop, a time, and his cell number. He didn’t realize it until he was done, but he’d unconsciously doodled a little heart in the corner. Was that too forward? It was too late for him to take it back now though, it was in ink.

He hurried home, intoxicated with excitement. He only had a week to wait. He took in a deep lungful of the cool London air, his nerves finally calming. The air felt cleaner, brighter than usual. He knew it was merely a result of his lightened mood, but the warm sun on his face and the light breeze in his hair was inspiring. New lines of poetry danced through his head, begging to be written. Even though nearly nothing had actually happened, Martin was happier in that moment than he had been in a very long time.


	6. The Incomprehensible Nature of Interpersonal Relationships

Everybody has the potential to be broken. There is no mind immune to madness. And some are more susceptible to silent influences than others. These minds are not weaker than their more stable peers, they are simply more open to the devious machinations of minds like Jon’s.

This chink in a person’s metaphorical armor was the true connection between all of Jon’s victims. It had nothing to do with appearance, means, lifestyle, or even personal history, though of course, certain combinations are more common than others. Over the years, he had developed an eye for identifying the accessibility of people’s psychological vulnerabilities. He knew almost on sight how easy it would be for him to tease his way into their minds and destroy them from the inside. That was what he loved the most about his games. He would find somebody who thought they were content, someone hopeful about their future, and slowly but surely break them. He would dissolve their sense of safety, their sense of sanity, their sense of trust. He would make them afraid until they have nothing left but themselves. 

And then he would take that too.

One of the last things most people let go of before acquiescing to their fates is their belief in the power of the law, so Jon was far from surprised when Emilee reached out to the police in a last-ditch attempt to reclaim what little certainty she had left. He watched on his screens as she gathered her things to officially go file a report against him. Of course, she didn’t know it was him she was reporting, nor did she realize that her attempts were guaranteed to be futile.

Jon followed her movements all the way to the police station but lost her when she entered the building. He’d have to be crazy to put cameras in the station, it was far too dangerous, but he wasn’t worried. He had eyes on the inside if he needed them, and he knew Emilee didn’t have any evidence besides. The little ziplock bag she had so conveniently labeled ‘evidence’ had mysteriously disappeared from her purse where she’d left it the night before. Now it was on Jon’s desk. All those little photographs and handwritten notes he had so generously left her were back in his possession and she had nothing to tie him to his crimes.

He knew what would happen when she was in there. She’d say she’s being followed. The officer at the desk might be reluctant to take her statement since she doesn’t have a name, but she’d be insistent. This back and forth might last a couple of minutes, but eventually, the officer would give in and transfer her to somebody else who would take down her information. They’d ask for any evidence she had with her. She’d reach in her purse, but there wouldn’t be anything there. She’d search, confused, assuring the officer that it had just been right there. Can she run home and come back in case it had fallen out before she got in the car? The officer would sigh and say that’s fine. She would drive home and look for the missing evidence. She wouldn’t find it. She’d go back to the station, apologizing profusely but claiming she wasn’t crazy. The officer would tell her they’d file the report anyways with what they had and just to come back if she found anything. And she never would. And the case would never be investigated.

Or at least that’s what usually happened. Some small part of Jon wasn’t sure it would go so smoothly this time. This time somebody was looking for him. 

Daisy seemed harmless enough. She’s determined, he’ll give her that, but Jon wasn’t too worried. She has too much of a tendency to get stuck in one line of thinking. If not for his help, it probably would have taken her months to notice any similarities in her cold cases beyond the witnesses’ testimonies. And even _with_ his help, she hadn’t yet gotten much farther. Jon was sure she’d give up soon enough; she posed no real threat to him in the long run.

In the short run though, she was about to catch wind of a new break in the case, which could be potentially dangerous for him. Daisy was on the lookout specifically for reports like the one Emilee was currently filing. There was no doubt as to whether she would find it, Jon just had to wait until she did. What he would do afterwards he wasn’t quite yet sure, but it didn’t worry him. He’d survived this long without being caught and he was confident his number wasn’t even close to being up. 

It wouldn’t be smart to kill Emilee so soon after going to the police. Jon knew he’d have to keep his head down for another couple months until she dropped back off the radar, but that was fine with him. He fancied himself quite skilled at self-restraint, even when the urge to kill was whispering to him so intensely as it was now. Besides, he thought, glancing up at the sticky note on the corner of the nearest screen, he had another mystery to solve in the meantime.

A time, an address, and a phone number hastily scribbled on a square of pink paper with a tiny heart in the corner. Martin had asked him to coffee that weekend. Why? The proposition had been unexpected, to say the least, and Martin had seemed so nervous when asking. Jon knew he had a tendency to be inclined towards suspicion, but there was something about the bespectacled redhead that made Jon want to trust him. He hadn’t heard any nefarious undertones in the question. It sounded genuine.

There was only one reasonable possibility as to what Martin wanted from him, and Jon didn’t understand it. He felt his pulse quicken unexpectedly at the thought: Martin must have asked him on a date. That had to be it, but why? Jon had never considered himself to be noticeably attractive, and he certainly wasn’t any good at genuine interpersonal relationships. Martin on the other hand was beautiful. He had gentle eyes and a soft smile and hands that had felt like lightning against Jon’s skin. The idea that someone as good and pure as Martin was interested in him was absurd. The boy must have been dropped on his head as a child. Jon still planned to go on the date though, even if for no other reason than to figure out what about Martin it was that made him feel so strange. 

****

The next day when he went into work, Jon was greeted at the door by an overly enthusiastic off-duty detective. Daisy was excitedly clutching a stack of papers to her chest, nearly shouting his name.

“Jon! Jon, you have to see this!”

Jon smiled congenially. “Daisy, I’m sure that whatever you found is quite exciting, but we _are_ still in a library and I hate to disturb the other patrons.”

“Oh, right,” she said. Her voice was lower this time but it still buzzed with barely contained enthusiasm. “Follow me.” She hurried over to the room where she kept her investigations and Jon followed behind.

When they go there and the door closed behind them, Daisy dropped the stack of papers on her desk and spread them out so Jon could see. He knew even before he picked up the top page what he would find: Emilee’s incomplete stalking complaint. He hadn’t expected Daisy to find it so quickly, but it wouldn’t make much of a difference. There was no evidence for her to find.

“It’s the Ceaseless Watcher’s current target! Her name’s Emilee Wilcox, age 26.” Jon knew all of this already. “I’m going to interview her tomorrow, see if I can learn anything else that’s not in the report. Hopefully, we can catch this guy before she or anybody else gets hurt.” There was a subtle venom in Daisy’s voice. If only she knew how close she really was to the object of her hatred.

Daisy kept talking, going over Emilee’s details and speculating on why the Ceaseless Watcher had chosen her. Jon made all the appropriate noises of interest, but his mind kept wandering. He knew the answer to Daisy’s puzzle. It was his own puzzle that occupied his thoughts, one that made his heart do unwelcome acrobatics when he wasn’t careful. Soon it became clear that he wasn’t really paying attention to what Daisy was saying.

“Is something wrong?”

“Hm?” The sudden direct address had caught him by surprise. “Oh, no. Just lost in thought, I suppose.”

“What were you thinking about?” Daisy asked.

“It’s uh,” Jon was about to say something offhanded and noncommittal, but something he couldn’t identify changed his mind. “I have a date on Saturday.” The words felt strange to say, and he was surprised by his own honesty.

“That’s exciting,” Daisy said, interested by the new topic. “Who is it?”

Jon wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell her. He wasn’t used to having much of a personal life, and he certainly wasn’t used to talking about it. But this was a _normal_ thing. People go on dates all the time, right?

“Um, his name’s Martin,” he hesitated. “You might have seen him around here; tall guy with curly red hair?” 

Daisy thought for a moment before responding. “Yeah, I think I know who you’re talking about. Never talked to him myself, but he seems sweet.”

Jon sighed, suddenly distracted once again. “Yeah, he is…” He fell silent for a while, lost in thought, mindlessly drumming his fingers on the desk and thinking about Martin, when suddenly he straightened and shook his head. “I’m sorry, that was incredibly unprofessional of me.”

His statement was met with a confused look. “We’re friends, Jon. You don’t have to be professional.” Daisy reached out to touch his hand, but he pulled away. Jon could feel the unpleasant heat of embarrassment spreading across his face. 

Friends? He didn’t understand. Jon didn’t have friends. In fact, the last time he could remember thinking of anybody as his friend was almost ten years ago, and it hadn’t ended on good terms. That was around the time he’d first started killing, though, so he didn’t blame them. Those were dark times, he didn’t like to think about them too much. He hadn’t gotten close enough to anybody since then to be friends. He didn’t let himself get close to people anymore. 

Jon could feel his cool and collected mask starting to slip. His thoughts were disorganizing and his breathing was becoming quick and shallow as the uncomfortable novelty of the situation hit him. 

“If you’ll excuse me, Daisy,” he whispered breathlessly, “I think I need to get some air.”

Without another word, he stood and left the room. He could feel Daisy watching him as he walked away, but he couldn’t care. An old woman might have been trying to get his attention from one of the tables, but he ignored her, making his way instead to the empty break room. Collapsing on the ancient couch, he lit a shaky cigarette and tried to calm his nerves.

What was wrong with him? Why was he reacting like this? He didn’t even know what he was reacting _to._ Uncertain questions raced through his head. He stared straight ahead unseeing as his free hand clawed unconsciously at the exposed skin on his arm, opening yet another wound. He couldn’t feel the pain. He couldn’t feel anything but pain.

He didn’t notice when Daisy came in and sat down next to him a few minutes later. 

“Jon?” Her voice was tentative, unsure. 

He didn’t say anything in response, only leaned over slowly and laid his head on her shoulder. He shuddered with every breath and his skin was cold and damp. Daisy put her arm around him, presumably trying to comfort him. He flinched at her touch, but then relaxed. She said they were friends, right? She wasn’t there to hurt him. 

“I’m sorry, Daisy.” His voice was barely audible. Hot tears rolled silently down his cheeks. He was shivering, but Daisy held him, rocking softly and shushing him gently.

“It’s okay, Jon,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”


	7. A Feeling of Being Watched

Daisy wasn’t sure how confident she was in her investigations so far. She was in that strange middle ground where she had a solid base of evidence and believable speculations, but her next steps were unclear. She’d gotten all she could from what remained of the cold cases and if Emilee was anything like the Ceaseless Watcher’s previous victims, interviewing her wasn’t going to be extremely helpful. But it was all she could think to do. At the very least it couldn’t hurt to build some rapport. Just in case. 

So she gathered her notes and made her way to Emilee’s apartment. It wasn’t too far from the city, but it was on the opposite side from where Daisy lived, meaning she had some time to think before she got there. And think she did, though her mind wandered somewhat from the task at hand. She was worried about Jon. When she left him last, he had insisted he was fine, but Daisy struggled to believe him. She had grown rather fond of the strange man, and she cared about his well-being. She was convinced that his panic attack the day before was somehow her fault, yet she didn’t know what it was she had done. There was no way she could have predicted it, and consciously she knew that she shouldn’t blame herself for something she had no control over, but she still couldn’t shake that underlying guilt. 

When she got to her destination, it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was beating down relentlessly from above. The summer was still young, but it was already proving to be an unusually warm year. She hadn’t been outside long and she was already sweating. There was no breeze. The air was heavy, thick and still like even the sky was watching, waiting.

Daisy wiped her brow with the back of her wrist and checked the address she had written in her notebook against the one on the wall before ringing the doorbell. She waited for a response, hoping the door would soon open to allow her some air-conditioned respite from the heat. 

Thankfully, she didn’t need to wait long. A heavy lock turned and the door creaked open. On the other side of the threshold stood a slight woman with tangled dark hair and deep-set eyes that darted nervously from side to side before settling on Daisy.

“Can I help you?” Her voice was professional sounding, though Daisy couldn’t help but notice the subtle quiver underneath. The hand by her side shook almost imperceptibly as she fidgeted with the fraying hem of her shirt.

“Are you Emilee Wilcox?” Daisy smiled and tried to sound as friendly as she could, knowing she tended to come off as somewhat intimidating.

“Yes,” Emilee said. “Who are you?” She looked wary.

“I’m Detective Tonner, but you can call me Daisy. I’m here with a couple follow up questions about the stalking report you filed the other day. May I come in?” She felt a drop of sweat roll down her back as she said this, as if to silently punctuate her request.

Emilee hesitated a moment before responding. She looked Daisy up and down appraisingly like she was deciding whether or not to trust her. Apparently she passed the test though because, after a couple of oppressively hot seconds, Emilee stepped back and wordlessly allowed Daisy into her home.

Daisy nodded to her gratefully as she went inside. The cool air was welcoming, as was the apartment’s decor. On first impression, it didn’t strike her as the kind of place the paranoid victim of a serial killer would live. Obviously, interior design usually has nothing to do with mental state or likelihood of getting murdered, but Emilee just seemed so normal. Not the kind of person to open themself up to the advances of someone like the Ceaseless Watcher.

“So, what can I do for you, detective? I’ve already told the police everything I know.” Emilee sat on the couch and watched as Daisy did a quick once-over of the room. There was a small bookshelf against one wall stocked mostly with cheap romance novels and what Daisy assumed were leftover economics textbooks from Emilee’s college days. Various knick-knacks decorated most of the surfaces and a dying houseplant crouched depressingly in the corner. It was simple, but homey.

Daisy sat in an uncomfortable armchair across from her and pulled out a small notebook. “The report mentions that you, quote, ‘lost’ all the evidence you had intended to bring with you to the station. Could you tell me more about that?”

Emilee shifted in her seat. “I told the other officer, I didn’t lose it. He _took it back.”_ Her voice was low and intense. She glanced around like she was watching for something.

“Who took it?”

“The Ceaseless Watcher. He leaves me pictures and notes, then takes them back a few days later. I’ve tried to keep them so I could show my friends, but it’s like he knows where I put them. They’re always gone in the morning.” She looked Daisy dead in the eye. “I don’t know how, but he’s watching me.”

There was that name again. The Ceaseless Watcher. Daisy’s suspicions had just been confirmed: this woman was in danger. “Can you describe these pictures and notes for me? Try to be specific.”

“He leaves pictures of me. And not like the kind you put on social media. They’re all in black and white, from high angles or from behind something. And they’re from _everywhere._ Inside, outside, in public, at work, in my _apartment._ But I can’t find any cameras. I’ve looked everywhere. I think he moves them when I’m gone.” She shivered. “But the notes, those are the worst. They’re specific. He doesn’t just watch me, he listens. He knows things…” Emilee trailed off, staring into the middle distance with a look of absolute terror etched on her face. 

She was silent for a while. Daisy waited, hoping she might have more to say but unwilling to push her any closer to the edge than she already was.

Then she spoke again, so quiet that Daisy had to strain to hear her. “I’m afraid, detective.”

Now it was Daisy’s turn to be at a loss for words. How was she supposed to comfort someone she knew was likely in immediate danger of a violent death? This wasn’t a grieving family member or an overly jumpy victim of petty crime. Emilee was next on the list of a nameless killer, and Daisy was suddenly sure she wouldn’t be able to save the poor girl.

Daisy swallowed. “You’re going to be okay,” she lied. “I’m going to find this monster, and I’m going to make sure he never again sees the light of day.” This part wasn’t a lie. Daisy’s fists clenched involuntarily. Anybody who could ruin the lives of innocent people like Emilee deserved to be hunted down and destroyed. She was going to make sure the Ceaseless Watcher never hurt anybody else, even if it meant she had to kill him herself.

“Here’s my card,” she said, rising and handing Emilee her business card. “If you ever need me, for whatever reason, don’t hesitate to call. We’ll get this guy.”

Emilee nodded and took the card. “Thank you,” she whispered, studying the floor. 

Daisy left the apartment solemnly. The sun was threatening to drop below the horizon, yet Daisy could swear it had only gotten hotter. She hated being reminded why she had become a cop. It’s far too easy to get caught up in the technicalities and the routine of it all. Nobody likes to come face to face with the injustices they’re trying to fight. The world can get dark. Daisy just wanted to make it a little lighter.

Absorbed as she was in her own dismal considerations, Daisy nearly didn’t notice when she was about to run into one of Emilee’s tall and vaguely familiar neighbors.

“Oh my god,” she said, jumping back surprised. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

The tall guy laughed, quiet but clear. “No, no, you’re okay. I wasn’t paying much attention myself.” He shifted his shopping bag to his left hand and extended the right in greeting. “I’m Martin.”

Daisy shook his hand, trying to figure out where she’d seen him before. “Daisy,” she said. After a moment of quiet, it hit her. Tall, curly red hair… “Wait, are you _Jon’s_ Martin?”

Martin blushed and smiled sheepishly. That was a yes. “I… um. Do you know him? ”

Daisy remembered why she was there. “Oh, by the way, Martin,” she said as casually as she could manage. “Do you know Emilee Wilcox?” It was possible that he might be a witness to something.

Martin’s expression said he was glad for the change of subject. “Emilee? Kind of. I mean, we’ve been neighbors for a couple years now, but we were never really friends. She’s been acting a bit strange recently though. Started avoiding the usual small talk and keeps saying she’s been robbed. It’s kind of sad, really,” he said with a contemplative tone. “She seemed so nice. Why do you ask?”

Interesting, but not very helpful. Daisy handed him one of her business cards, which he inspected curiously. “I’m a detective. She filed a stalking report the other day and I was here just following up. If you see anything suspicious, call me. We could use all the help we can get.”

“Huh. Well, I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“Thanks,” Daisy said as she nodded and began to walk away. “And tell Jon I say hi.”


	8. First Date

Martin looked around the small coffee shop, pulse racing, searching for his date. His eyes flicked around the room, straining, praying that he might spot that familiar face, but it wasn’t there. His heart caught in his throat. He checked his watch. He was only two minutes early. Was he too early? What was appropriate timing for a first date? Was he going to come across as too eager? Would that ruin his chances? His breathing was far faster than it should be.

He made his way to a little table in the corner, his footsteps quickened by his nerves. He sat facing the door, taking deep slow breaths and trying to calm his racing thoughts. The air smelled strongly of coffee, a dark, chocolatey scent that he tried to focus on to ground himself. It worked somewhat. He closed his eyes and concentrated, telling himself that he was overreacting. That he wasn’t being stood up. That he was fine.

“Hello, Martin.”

Martin nearly fell out of his chair. Between his distracting thoughts and having his eyes closed, he hadn’t noticed Jon come in. The smaller man slid into the chair across from him, waiting for a response.

Martin forgot how to form words. He made shapes with his mouth, but the sound wouldn’t come out. He was staring at Jon entranced and uncomprehending. Jon had actually come! And he was beautiful. His navy cardigan accented his eyes perfectly and his long hair cascaded down to his shoulders like an ethereal silver and obsidian waterfall. How was it possible that somebody so perfect willingly sat at the same table as him?

“I, um, uh,” he finally managed to stutter out, “I like your hair.”

Seriously? That’s what he said? ‘I like your hair’? Martin was sure he couldn’t have said anything dumber. They had just gotten there and he was already making a fool of himself.

“You do?” Jon asked, glancing away and fingering one of the soft curls that had fallen over his cheek. “I don’t usually wear it down like this. It tends to fall in my eyes.”

“No, yeah!” Martin exclaimed, surprised that he apparently hadn’t sounded as dumb as he thought. “It looks really good! I can’t ever get my hair to do anything other than look like a bird’s nest,” he laughed awkwardly. “Would you like to order some coffee?”

Jon sighed with relief when Martin changed the subject. “Yes. Please.” The two of them rose and made their way to the counter to place their orders. “Thank you for not asking more about my hair. It does what it wants. I have no idea how it works,” he laughed and shook his head. The sound was quiet but warm. “And for the record, I don’t think your hair looks like a bird’s nest. I think it looks nice.”

Soon they were sat back down in that cozy corner with their drinks. Jon had gotten an iced coffee, which he sweetened with a single packet of sugar, and Martin had something sweet and milky, though, in his anxiety and his preoccupation with the fact that he’d just been complimented, he wasn’t paying much attention to exactly what it was he’d ordered. The coffee wasn’t of the highest quality, but it was good and it made for a sufficient excuse not to keep rambling. And rambling was one of the things Martin was best at when he was nervous.

The conversation was relatively shallow as they talked about this and that, never focusing on one topic for too long. But then Jon steered the discussion in a more personal direction and asked about Martin’s studies. It had been obvious that he was in university from how frequently he was at the library, but apparently, Jon had never paid close enough attention to learn specifically what it was Martin was always writing about.

Martin was truthfully quite pleased by the change in tone. It meant he could ramble about things he actually knew anything about rather than the blind small talk from earlier. “I’m an English major,” he said proudly. “I want to be a poet.”

“How romantic,” Jon laughed. Martin was used to being dismissed offhand when he told people his goals, but Jon’s words held no malice. There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm. He sounded genuine.

With Jon’s encouragement, Martin went on to talk at length about his studies, his lifelong love of poetry, his perceived lack of talent. And Jon listened. Occasionally he would inject polite comments or reassuring observations, but for the most part, he just listened. Martin didn’t feel judged. He felt accepted, more so than he had in a long while. Jon seemed to just drink in his words with wide eyes and a soft smile.

Their conversation ebbed and flowed naturally, comfortably. Jon wasn’t nearly as wordy as Martin, but Martin couldn’t help but be captivated by everything he said. He must have a fascinating life, Martin thought. A degree in psychology, the same library job for nine years, no family to speak of, sharp as a tack. So gentle and inhumanly beautiful. Martin was spellbound and in love.

During a lull in the conversation, Martin caught sight of someone familiar coming through the door. He raised a hand in silent greeting when Emilee saw him. She smiled faintly, but once her drink was prepared, she hurried away.

“Who was that?” Jon asked, watching her leave.

“Emilee? She’s just my neighbor. Don’t worry, I’m not cheating on you already,” he joked, laughing nervously.

Jon didn’t seem to have caught the joke. He turned back to Martin with an inscrutable expression. “Is she okay?”

Martin’s anxiety flared. “Um, no, actually. She’s uh, I think she’s been going through a lot of stuff recently. A, a stalker, I think.” He paused, unsure whether it was really appropriate to go on. “Yeah, there was a detective over at her apartment yesterday. I hope nothing bad happens to her.”

“A detective? Sounds serious,” Jon said lightly, his smile returning. He acted like nothing strange had happened, but something in his eyes told Martin he was still distracted.

The rest of their date continued congenially but uneventfully, and by the end, Martin wasn’t sure whether or not it had gone well. It had only lasted a few seconds, but after the incident with Emilee, the underlying tone had changed. He didn’t know what to make of it.

As they were saying their goodbyes, Jon placed his hand over Martin’s on the table. It was the first time they touched all afternoon and the contact sent a shock of lightning up his arm and down his spine. He looked Martin directly in the eye with a wide but soft smile. Martin melted.

“I had a wonderful time today, Martin. We should do this again.” 

Then Jon stood and walked away without waiting for a response, leaving Martin reeling and once again alone with his thoughts. He was stunned by his luck. A second date? Jon was so wonderful, so perfect, and he wanted to see Martin again. Martin felt like he might pass out. It was all too good to be true.


	9. Jon's Soliloquy

The basement itself had a chill to it whenever it was empty. The damp earth just outside the unfinished concrete walls sucked the heat from the vast and empty space like a vampire. It was a place that would send a shiver down the spine of anyone who entered, and not just because of the cold. Sometimes when bad things happen, they leave a stain. They can cause a disturbance in the very fabric of the place where it happened.

Or sometimes it’s just bloodstains. Dark, coppery-scented stains on a concrete floor. Jon’s lip curled in disgust as he looked over the mess that needed to be cleaned. When would he learn to mop up the blood _before_ it dries? It would have saved him so much work now when he had to prepare the area for its next inhabitant. He might not have been expecting her for another couple of weeks, but the place needed to be cleaned nonetheless. He sighed and set down the bucket of bleach he’d brought with him. This could take hours.

Getting blood out of concrete is a labor-intensive but mindless task. The dried blood must first be rehydrated then coaxed from the porous surface of the concrete before it can be washed away. In other words, it requires scrubbing. Lots and lots of scrubbing. And it leaves one with plenty of time to think.

Mostly Jon thought about Martin and how much he hated him. No. He shook his head. That wasn’t right. He didn’t hate Martin, the beautiful man with the perfect eyes and the genuine smile. No, his hatred wasn’t for Martin, it was for the way he made him feel, for that deep pain it left in his chest that he didn’t understand. He hated it because he didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t something he could step back from and dissect like he could anything else, and it infuriated him. It was something from inside that twisted his heart and hurt him and made him do things he didn’t want to do.

Things like agreeing to coffee or suggesting a second date. He didn’t want to do that. It had just… slipped out. He didn’t want to spend any more time with Martin than he had to because being in his presence only made that confusing feeling stronger and more painful. It might have been selfish, but he didn’t want to have to deal with that hurt.

And he didn’t want to have to hurt Martin like he knew he eventually would. Jon grimaced at the pale bloody bubbles on the floor surrounding him. There was no way Martin could find out who he really was and not be hurt. There was no possible way for that story to have a happy ending. It had to end now. It would probably break Martin’s heart, but it was better to hurt him a little now than to completely destroy him later, Right? Surely cutting him off was the safest course of action for everybody. Even if it hurt Martin. Even if it hurt Jon.

The idea made Jon’s throat close up, but they were both better off following their own separate paths. Martin deserved to be happy, to graduate and become a successful poet like he dreamed. And Jon needed to finish what he had started with Emilee. It wasn’t necessarily what he wanted, but it was what he needed. At this point, not even someone like Martin could stop him. He snarled unintentionally. The only way Emilee could survive would be if the police got to him first.

Jon straightened. _Fuck._ He had forgotten about the police. He’d painted himself into a corner: they could connect him to Emilee now. He returned to his scrubbing with a renewed vigor. Damn that Martin. Beautiful, perfect Martin. He knew Emilee, he’d talked to Daisy, and now she would be able to draw a direct line between Jon and his victim. This could only end badly.

He was beginning to sweat despite the cold. He couldn’t drop Martin. If being with him was suspicious, getting rid of him now would be even worse. And… Jon shivered. He needed to stop thinking about his own feelings. Whatever he thought about Martin on a personal level was irrelevant. It didn’t matter how much he desperately wanted to know more about that tender and genuine poet. With that nervous smile that melted Jon’s heart and those misty eyes full of stars. Those soft hands and that face that made Jon want to tell him everything.

But he couldn’t tell him everything. He couldn’t tell Martin anything. It would put them both in danger. And that fact hurt Jon too. It hurt to know that, even if by some miracle they were able to build a successful relationship, he’d never be able to fully open up. Not to Martin.

_And not to Daisy either…_

What? The thought surprised him. Why would he want to come clean to her? She was hunting him; she hated him. She was the only person who’d ever even come close to learning his secrets. She was a skilled cop, and Jon could see in her eyes that she was determined to catch him. He didn’t want that. So why would he even consider telling _her_ the truth?

Jon didn’t care about Daisy, she was just a pesky obstacle that he’d eventually need to eliminate. Or at least that’s what he told himself. And he almost believed it. But if it was true, then why did something inside of him want her to succeed? Why did he find himself mirroring her excitement when she thought she made a break in the case, and her disappointment when it turned out to be nothing?

And why did he keep helping her? At first, it had been for the same reason he did anything: curiosity. He wanted to see how far she would get before giving up, he wanted to know what he looked like to the other side. But something had changed. He was still gripped by that destructive curiosity, but it was no longer his only motivation. He didn’t try to sabotage her anymore like he did in the beginning, and not only because he’d quickly found out that she was too observant for him to steal her notes unnoticed.

He sat back on his knees and let out a cold laugh as an absurd idea crossed his mind. _Maybe he wanted to be caught._ Ha. As if. That was about as likely as God Himself coming down to shake his hand. Which is to say, impossible. Why on Earth would he want to be caught? A little recognition for all his hard work might be nice, but not enough so as to send him to the chair. That would be, well, undesirable, to say the least.

He dunked his brush back in the bucket of bleach next to him and returned to his task with a tired sigh. His thoughts drifted back to the last time he saw Daisy, when he had embarrassed himself by having an uncalled-for panic attack. He hadn’t had one of those in years. What had triggered it? He thought for a moment then frowned. Oh, right. She had called him a friend. How absurd. Jon was certain he wasn’t capable of something as intentionally emotional as friendship. Especially with someone who so clearly wanted to kill him, even if she didn’t realize it was him she wanted to kill.

Still, he couldn’t shake the thought that he might want to be friends with her in return. He enjoyed her company, he liked to see her happy, he wanted to help her reach her goals. But that could never happen. Not if he wanted to survive. And in the end, self-preservation trumps all else.

Jon felt a familiar sensation begin to bubble up unexpectedly inside him. His palms itched and he could hear the blood in his ears. He gritted his teeth and tried to push it back down, but it wouldn’t go away. The rage was back. It was back and it hurt. What he was angry at, he couldn’t tell, but that didn’t make it any easier. Maybe he was mad at Daisy for hunting him then turning around and pretending to be someone he could trust. Maybe he was mad at Martin for being so genuinely good and making him feel so weak and exposed. Or maybe he was mad at himself for letting himself get so tangled up in this sticky web of his own unwitting design.

That was it, really. Jon hated himself. He hated how small and weak he had always been. He hated how bad he was at interacting with other people. He hated how angry he got, how it consumed him, and how he had let himself become a monster because of it. He hated everything he did, everything he said, everything he knew he could never stop himself from doing. He hated the bloodstains on the floor in front of him.

And more than anything, he hated how much he enjoyed it all. The excitement he felt when he found his next victim, the slow trickle of satisfaction he got from watching them crumble, the shot of adrenaline that came with every break-in and kidnapping, the feeling of power when he held them captive, and that overwhelming flood of ecstasy when he finally watched the last flicker of light leave their eyes. The flames of hell burned him and he loved it. 

He reveled in the pain and fear that he caused, but somewhere deep down it killed him. He didn’t have a single memory that wasn’t somehow tinged with regret and it ate at him. He hated how good it all felt, how much he loved it.

Jon knew what he was and it made him sick. He was a monster. A serial killer of the worst kind. Irreversibly broken inside. He was damned. He was damned the moment he first picked up that horrid knife. It wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ have friends, per se, that he couldn’t love. It was that he believed he didn’t deserve it. Things like happiness and human connection were best reserved for good people. People like Martin and Daisy who deserved it. Not for people like Jon. Not the people like him who had turned their back on the light and walked into the darkness, so deep that they would never again see the sun.

People who sell their souls for a taste of what they think is heaven deserve only hell.


	10. Paths with no Maps

Daisy glared at the increasingly useless whiteboard across from her, hoping maybe she’d be able to scare something helpful out of the empty evidence taped to its surface. Abandoned missing persons cases, a paranoid but otherwise physically unhurt woman, a ghost of a killer too careful to be found, Daisy had nothing but circumstance. She’d tried to take Jon’s advice and look for behavioral patterns, but she wasn’t trained in criminal psychology and, without the help of an expert, she hadn’t gotten much further than ‘he’s remarkably smart and extremely meticulous about covering his tracks,’ which wasn’t a very useful observation on its own.

“You know giving it dirty looks isn’t typically an effective method of examining evidence, right?” Jon was sitting in the corner of the small room reading the day’s newspaper, not looking at Daisy but apparently still watching her.

Daisy turned her glare in his direction. “I’ve tried everything else. What would _you_ do?” She didn’t try to hide her sarcasm. Every trail of evidence she’d followed so far had led to a dead-end and she was losing her patience. Jon’s dry jokes weren’t helping her mood either.

“Well, obviously what you have up there isn’t enough. You should look for more evidence.”

Daisy scoffed at him and crossed her arms. “You think I haven’t already tried that?”

Jon folded his paper and stood up gracefully. Popping the cap off one of the dry erase markers, he started writing something on the whiteboard that Daisy couldn’t see.

“What do you not have?” he asked as he wrote. The purple marker squeaked loudly under his hand.

“Anything,” Daisy said annoyed. He was a good guy and incredibly helpful, but he was always either offensively blunt or frustratingly indirect. There was no in-between with him.

“Bodies, Daisy. You don’t have any bodies. And, while there is precedent, everybody knows it’s exceedingly difficult to solve a murder without a body.”

“What’s your point, Jon?” Daisy huffed. He hadn’t yet told her anything she didn’t already know.

“My point,” he said, turning around with an almost mischievous smile and spreading his hands dramatically, “is that you need to find a body.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?” She was starting to get irritated by his vagaries.

Daisy could see now what he had written on the board. It was a list: ‘home range, frequented locations, last known location, overlaps.’ She wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.

“The same way you’ve been conducting this entire case: uncanny similarities.” He turned back around and rearranged the papers Daisy had attached to the board, creating a large empty space where he started drawing a number of squiggly lines that meant nothing to Daisy. She sat and watched him confused, but at least she could see what he was doing this time. “You still haven’t figured out any solid connection between your victims besides their unfortunate ends, no?”

“No…?” Where was he going with this?

“Right. So their only similarities are what happened to them,” he drew some dots on his mess of lines, checking the profiles between each one, “and where they lived.” He turned around and looked at her expectantly.

Daisy shook her head and looked back at him blankly. “I don’t follow. And it’s not like they all lived close together,” she pointed out.

Jon’s expression fell and he sighed. “No, but they all lived here in London. Meaning that even if they never met, they might have frequented the same places. Libraries and coffee shops and the like. If you can figure out where their paths commonly intersected, you’ll get an idea of where the Ceaseless Watcher probably found them. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but killers usually dump bodies relatively close to where they live, right? If you know where he hunts, then you know where to look for his leftovers.”

Realization hit Daisy like a train. “Oh, that’s a map!”

Jon just stared at her confused and probably a little offended. “Of course it’s a map. What did you think it was?”

She shrugged. “No idea. I was trying to figure out what a pile of lines had to do with where people get coffee. Those are good ideas though,” she said, jotting down notes on what he said. Then she looked back up. “How do you come up with all of this?”

“All of what?”

“Your ideas. Sometimes it feels like you’re the one in charge of this investigation instead of me.” She smirked. “Makes me feel like a bad detective.” If she was being honest, she was almost jealous of Jon. The man was clearly a genius, yet, from what she could tell, he hadn’t a care in the world beyond his own little life. No sense of responsibility for the people he couldn’t help, nobody to punish him for the things he couldn’t control, it must be nice not to feel all that weight on his shoulders. Daisy frowned internally; she couldn’t relate. She’d always felt inadequate, not as quick or as talented as her peers, and she had never been able to accept the things she couldn’t change.

Jon laughed politely. “I assure you, Daisy, you’re a much better detective than I. You actually solve cases. I’m just a nobody who reads too many crime novels.”

“I don’t know,” she teased. “I think you could make a pretty good detective if you put your mind to it.” Daisy pulled up a map of the city on her computer and started to make something a little more legible than Jon’s artistic chicken scratch. “Actually, I think we’re taking applications right now if you’re interested,” she said in a slightly more serious tone.

At that, Jon looked away and rubbed his neck nervously. “I don’t think that would be a good idea…” His voice and mannerisms had changed from his usual confidence to something more hesitant and embarrassed.

“Why not? You have the skills.”

“Let’s just say I’m not on the best of terms with some of your superiors…” he muttered.

“Ooh, a teenage delinquent,” Daisy mused playfully. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s not like you’ve killed anybody.”

Daisy laughed at her own joke and Jon joined her, though not quite as enthusiastically. They were both relieved though when a knock on the door allowed them to change the subject. Daisy hadn’t intended to make Jon uncomfortable, so she was grateful for the excuse to move on.

“Come in,” Daisy said, reassuming some of her professionalism.

Their interruptor-slash-savior turned out to be Martin. When he walked in, Daisy saw Jon visibly blush and start scratching subtly at his leg.

“H- hello, Martin,” he stuttered softly. He turned his head away to avoid direct eye contact, but kept glancing back up.

Martin wasn’t much better at hiding his nerves. “Hi, Jon,” he said, also avoiding eye contact. He ran his fingers through his hair, but they got caught in the wild curls and he had to try to detangle them without being too obvious about it. He failed at the subtlety, causing Daisy to have to suppress a quiet giggle. Jon must have seen it too because he laughed silently. Martin smiled sheepishly. “I, uh, there’s an open mic night on Wednesday I was planning on going to. Would you, um, would you like to go with me? I, I can text you the address…” He looked at Jon with something halfway between expectation and embarrassment.

“I…” Jon’s brow furrowed in what looked almost like pain. The expression lasted less than a second though, then he took a deep breath and looked back up. “Yes. Yes, I would love to go with you, Martin,” he said with a soft smile and a light in his eye.

Martin’s face lit up with excitement when he said that. He moved like he was going to hug Jon, but stopped himself when Jon flinched. “It’s, uh, it’s a date! I’ll see you then!” Then, with the widest smile Daisy thought she’d ever seen, he hurried out of the room.

When Martin was gone, Daisy turned back to Jon, who was still standing completely tense with his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders up to his ears. She laughed and he slowly relaxed, but his face only got redder.

Jon glared at her defensively. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Jon,” she managed to say between her uncontrollable giggling, “but that was adorable.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Sure, you keep telling yourself that,” she smiled. “But seriously though, I like him. He seems like a good guy.”

Jon folded his arms and pouted childishly. “I don’t need your approval, but thank you. I like him too.” He sat down and picked up the paper he had been reading earlier.

Daisy smirked to herself and returned to her work. She got Jon’s message that he was done talking, but the interaction left her in a good mood. She felt reinvigorated, momentarily content to live in a world where obvious love like Jon and Martin’s exists, even if they didn’t see it themselves. Whatever happened, at that moment she felt like she could do anything she put her mind to. Her prey couldn’t evade her forever.


	11. The Emptiness of Time Between Events

Martin flipped through the graphite-smeared pages of his many composition notebooks. Some were old and worn, covered in stains from myriad spilled drinks, others were newer, with crisper pages and cleaner markings. All of them were filled cover to cover with creative musings and scraps of poetic inspiration. None of them had what he was looking for.

He sighed and checked his phone. He still had a good couple hours to waste before his date that night, a couple hours to worry about finding a poem good enough to read in public. Most of his poems that were any good were about Jon, and Martin really didn’t want to read any of those in front of him. Especially not at an open mic night where other people could hear too. Not yet at least. It would take a while for him to build up that kind of confidence.

A short list of potentials sat on the desk next to him. He scowled at it in frustration. Those poems were all okay, but he didn’t think any of them were actually any good. With every second that passed, he was becoming less and less sure of himself. His anxieties were starting to tell him that, just maybe, he didn’t have any talent at all.

“No, Martin, stop that,” he said to himself in the otherwise empty air of his apartment. “You’re just nervous. It has nothing to do with your writing. It’s just nerves. It’s just nerves.” Martin took a deep breath and tried to calm his thoughts. Maybe if he focused on something else for a while he might be able to believe the things he was saying.

Just then he heard a knock on his door, a blessed distraction from his unhappy mind. He pushed back from the desk, jumping slightly at the loud scraping of his chair against the floor. The small, timid person on the other side was an unexpected visitor.

“Emilee!” Martin had thought his neighbor was avoiding him, so why was she here? “It’s been a while. How’s the, uh, the stalker?”

Her face twitched when he said that and Martin immediately regretted bringing it up. “You know about that?”

“Er, yeah. Sorry. I, uh, I ran into that detective when she was here last week. She said you filed a report?” He self-consciously rubbed his neck, hoping he hadn’t offended her as much as he thought he did.

“I see,” she said, thankfully moving on. Martin let out a breath. “Well. That’s actually what I came to talk to you about. I’m starting a petition for better security in the apartments.” Emilee handed him a pen and clipboard that he hadn’t noticed she’d been holding. “Somebody keeps breaking into my apartment and management hasn’t done a thing about it. I’m through waiting.”

Martin took the clipboard and inspected it. Apparently, she’d only collected three signatures so far. Hopefully, that meant she’d only just started; there were far more than just three other people in the complex. He watched Emilee from the corner of his eye as he read what she had written. She was clearly trying very hard to hide her shifting eyes and shaking hands. She looked just as paranoid as ever, despite the thin mask of professionalism. The paper itself was simple, describing ideas for installing better security cameras and possibly hiring a guard or two. Some of it seemed a little extreme, but Martin shrugged and added his signature to the list. “I suppose you can never be too careful,” he said, handing back the clipboard and pen. “Good luck with the rest of the tenants.”

“Thanks.” Then, without another word, Martin’s subtly trembling neighbor turned and left to continue on her mission. He was worried about her. The two had never been close, but Martin hated to see her suffering so, particularly when there wasn’t anything he could do to help. Maybe he could tell Daisy about the petition? He hoped nothing bad would happen to her.

But those worries were nebulous. Martin closed the door and returned to his pile of paper and poetry. This was a more tangible worry, one he could actively do something about. And it seemed that the short distraction was exactly what he needed to get his mind back on track.

He picked up a pencil and flipped to one of the poems on his list. Of course he wouldn’t find the perfect piece in a notebook full of first drafts, he realized, and writing something new (as he had almost considered) would just be a tedious exercise in futility. His best bet was to take the works with the most potential and edit them to perfection. That didn’t sound too hard. He could do that.

The next two hours were spent at his desk, thoughtfully exchanging bland words for more exciting ones, playing with rhythms and rhyme schemes, decorating the unpolished emotion on the page in hopes that he could make it sound more beautiful while still keeping the core feelings shining through. It was delicate work, but by the end, Martin thought he might have something worth presenting. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t bad. He’d at least be able to make it to the bar before crumpling under the ever-present self-doubt.


	12. Poetic Inspiration and the Confidence that Follows

Jon arrived at the bar shortly after sunset. The place was unimpressive from the street, but from inside, he could see why Martin liked it. Its setup was reminiscent of the old underground speakeasies. A bar took up most of the right side wall, protecting high cabinets of dark wood and mirrors on which an impressive collection of bottles were proudly displayed. A small stage sat on the other side where a tall but slight man in thick glasses and a tee-shirt looked to be setting up a microphone for the night’s entertainment. The atmosphere was quiet but not restrained; the various small groups scattered around the tables that filled the floor all seemed to be enjoying themselves without yet having turned too heavily to their drinks.

Martin met Jon at the door and led him to the bar where sat a stack of papers and two beers. One was already half empty. “I hope you don’t mind that I started without you. I put my name on the list to perform and nearly took it right back off,” he laughed. “I needed something to calm my nerves until you got here.” He took a sip from the half-empty bottle and slid the other in Jon’s direction. “I got you one too. I wasn’t sure what you like, so I just got you the same kind as me. If you don’t like it, I can get you something else. They have lots of stuff here.”

Jon smiled politely and took a sip of the drink offered him. It wasn’t bad, though he’d never really been much of a drinker. He thanked Martin and told him he didn’t mind. What he didn’t tell him was how unexpectedly nice it had felt to hear that Martin considered him comforting. He wasn’t used to having that kind of effect on people.

The night had only just begun, yet Jon had the feeling it was going to go well. Maybe he’d get the chance to learn something more about why the adorable redhead made him feel the way he did. He had officially labeled these feelings as attraction, perhaps even some sort of romantic infatuation, but he still didn’t understand them.

Martin had started telling him about the bar and the various arts events it supported. Jon wasn’t actively listening though. He was paying enough attention to know when and how to appropriately react, but what actually occupied his thoughts was Martin's face, his excited grin, the bright spark of life in his stormy grey eyes that Jon had never seen in the mirror.

Jon tuned back in when Martin’s monologue turned to talking about more personal experiences.

“Did you know this was the first place I ever read my poetry in public?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Martin laughed, taking another sip of his drink. “I was seventeen. I still have no clue why they let me in. They never asked for an ID, so I just walked in and signed up to perform. Worst night of my life.”

“Okay, now you have to tell me what happened.”

Martin blushed with what Jon assumed to be remembered embarrassment. “Oh, god, it was awful. I don’t actually remember the poem itself, but I was so nervous when I got up on that stage that I could barely read my own handwriting. The whole place was dead silent when I got done and I couldn’t bear to show my face again in public for weeks.” He laughed at himself. “It was years until I even let anybody read my work in private.”

Jon softly mirrored Martin’s laughter and smiled. “Speaking of which,” he said, nodding at the stack of papers that sat untouched in front of his date. “Can I read it?” 

Pulling the stack slightly towards him and narrowing his eyes slightly, Martin looked at Jon, giving him an expression that he couldn’t quite parse. “Hmm,” he mused with what Jon was pretty sure was playfulness. “I don’t think so. I think you should have to wait just like everybody else.”

The tiniest pinch of jealousy blossomed in Jon’s chest, though he didn’t let it show on his face. He knew consciously that this was most likely just Martin’s way of being shy about his art, but he still didn’t like being compared to ‘everybody else’. They were all sheep, just mindlessly living out their meaningless lives. Jon was a wolf. He hunted sheep.

But no matter. There were better things to dwell on, like how the steady stream of second-rate musicians crossing the little stage made Martin smile, or the light and clear sound of his voice as he told Jon more about his history and his love for the fine arts. All the little things about him that made Jon’s heart flutter. It was admittedly difficult, but with a little work, Jon was able to more or less let go of his dark preoccupations and let himself just enjoy the night, the drinks, and the company.

Martin, on the other hand, had slowly been losing his social stamina over the course of the night. He’d been checking the time with increasing frequency and the later it got, the more he seemed to be fidgeting with his clothes, his papers, his drinks. When he ordered his fourth beer in half as many hours, Jon was concerned enough to say something.

“Martin, is everything okay?” Jon placed his hand over Martin’s and tried to dissect the panic in his eyes. It was a look Jon was all too familiar with, but he wasn’t entirely sure of its cause.

“What? Oh,” he laughed self-consciously. “It’s fine. I’m just nervous is all. Is it that obvious?”

“What are you worried about?”

Martin took a deep breath and shuffled through his papers again, avoiding eye contact. “What, what if I’m not any good? What if I mess up? What if…” he looked up at Jon, his eyes wet with panic. “What if they laugh at me?”

Jon smiled, hoping he was being reassuring. “You’ll do great.” He squeezed his hand. “Just remember to breathe. And if anybody laughs,” don’t say you’ll kill them, Jon, don’t say you’ll kill them, “I’ll spit in their drink.”

His words seemed to work because Martin smiled and laughed nervously. “Don’t do that, you’ll get us kicked out.”

“There’s other bars,” he shrugged. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, you’re performing next. Are you ready?”

Martin swallowed and took a deep swig of his drink before nodding and straightening his shirt. “Okay.” He grabbed up his stack of poems and smiled at Jon, clearly trying to convince himself to be brave. “Okay.”

Jon watched him as he slowly made his way to the stage. For such a big guy, Martin always made himself look so small. Why did he do that? Jon took a sip from his beer before spitting it back out. It had gotten warm and gone a bit flat since Martin had ordered it. It looked like he’d be stopping at only half a bottle tonight. The gesture had been appreciated though.

Currently performing was a duet that Jon thought should stick to drunken karaoke. They might have been singing ABBA, but it was hard to tell through all the missed notes. Martin stood to the side, staring at his papers and muttering to himself. He seemed to be ignorant of the cacophony coming from next to him, instead absorbed in his obvious anxieties.

When it was his turn to take the stage, Martin looked terrified. His hands were shaking and he was noticeably pale. He scanned the room silently until his eyes met Jon’s, who grinned and nodded assuringly, giving him a thumbs up. Martin smiled nervously in return and took a deep breath. He introduced himself quietly, uncertainly, into the microphone.

The performance was off to a bumpy start, but as he read, Martin appeared to relax. His voice steadied and got a little louder and he stopped trembling so violently. The poems themselves weren’t too impressive, mostly just clumsy considerations on beauty and nature and the like, but they were clearly written with such emotion that Jon couldn’t help but fall a little bit more in love.

As Martin wrapped up his readings and left the stage, most of the bar applauded with polite enthusiasm, but Jon made sure his appreciation of the performance was heard above the rest. Martin hurried back to him excitedly, grinning proudly but still shaking a bit with leftover stage fright.

“I, I did it! I… How did I do?”

“I thought you did very well,” Jon smiled.

Martin’s eyes lit up. “Really? You liked it?” He took a drink, presumably to calm his near-hyperventilation.

For some reason he couldn’t piece out, Jon found Martin’s particular brand of excited uncertainty to be extremely endearing. “Of course I did. You have quite a way with words.” If he was being honest, he knew embarrassingly little about poetry, but he could tell when he liked something. He liked Martin.

Martin’s cheeks were bright red, though it was unclear whether it was from anxiety, the compliment, or just the alcohol. He fell silent and looked down at his bottle, smiling softly and making those little faces people make when they’re nervously trying to convince themself to do something. What was he thinking about? Jon laughed silently to himself; Martin’s tiny unconscious expressions were adorably amusing.

Suddenly Martin looked up at Jon with hesitant determination. He reached out and touched the side of Jon’s face. His gentle artist’s fingers were soft against Jon’s scars. The feeling was the epitome of luxury when compared to his lifetime of harsh self-hatred. His heart threatened to break through his ribs, terrified of letting himself get too close. But he forced himself not to pull away.

Instead, Jon tried to mentally prepare for whatever might happen next. He didn’t know what to expect. He hadn’t been touched so intimately in years, and this was only light fingers on his jaw. Why was he so afraid? Martin wasn’t going to hurt him. This was perhaps the sweetest, most harmless man he’d ever met. There was no danger here.

When Martin pressed his lips against Jon’s own, his heart stopped. A white-hot electricity shot through his body and set every nerve on fire. He couldn’t breathe. He thought he might die.

“Martin,” he gasped, pushing him away instinctively. Instantly he felt bad about doing so. His cheeks were probably about as red as Martin’s, judging from the intense heat he could feel spreading across his face.

Martin looked away, embarrassed. “S- sorry,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what came over me. I wasn’t, I wasn’t thinking.”

Jon shook his head and gently turned Martin’s face to his own. “Don’t be sorry,” he smiled. “That was, it was good. I just… It’s been a while, you know? I’m not ready for that yet.”

“O- okay,” he said quietly, still not quite meeting Jon’s eyes. “Can I, can I hold your hand?”

It was an odd request, Jon thought, but he nodded and let Martin twine their fingers together. He pulled Jon’s hand into his lap and sat silently for a moment, touching his skin, tracing his scars, curling and uncurling his fingers. It struck Jon how well their hands fit together, how genuinely happy it made him to be in the same space as Martin.

“I like you, Jon.” Martin’s voice was small when he finally spoke. “Like, a lot. And I know this is only the second time we’ve talked for more than a minute at a time, and I’m,” he laughed a little, “I’m definitely not sober right now, but I want more of this.” He squeezed Jon’s hand. “I want to hold your hand more than just this once. Will you,” he looked up with a nervous smile. “Will you be my boyfriend, Jon? Officially?”

Jon laughed, a bit taken aback by the question. “To be honest, I thought I already was.”

Martin gasped, his face alight with elation. “Is that a yes?” Jon grinned and nodded and Martin threw his arms around his neck, tears welling in his eyes. “Oh, Jon. Thank you,” he laughed, hugging him tightly.

At first, Jon stiffened, unused to so much human contact, but after a moment he let himself relax into Martin’s touch. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against Martin’s neck. The embrace was soft and warm. Comforting. This was a feeling he could get used to. “No,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus: the duet butchering ABBA was Michael and Helen and nobody knows if they were singing bad on purpose to be annoying or if they actually can't sing


	13. A Mistake

“Detective! Detective, he’s,” Emilee gasped, struggling to form words. “I- I think he’s here.” Her voice was hushed and Daisy could hear her quick, shallow breathing even through the static of the phone.

“Breathe, Ms. Wilcox. I’m on my way.” Daisy rolled out of bed and got dressed, still on the phone. It was the middle of the night, she was still half asleep, and Emilee’s apartment was miles away. There was no way she’d get there before he was gone, but she had to try. “Where are you?”

“In the closet. Detective, what if he finds me?”

“He won’t find you. Just stay hidden and stay quiet. I’m right here. I’ll stay on the line until I get there, okay?” Daisy tried to be calming, but she wasn’t hopeful. Once a serial killer gets inside, their victims rarely escape untouched. If the Ceaseless Watcher really was there, Emilee could be in serious danger.

****

When Daisy finally made it to Emilee’s apartment, the summer sun was already lightening the sky. She had kept her promise and stayed on the phone, so she knew Emilee was still alive, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Emilee had refused to say anything more than that the intruder was gone, citing a fear that her phone may have been tapped. The excuse didn’t make much sense to Daisy, but there was no use arguing. The sound of the doorbell was deafening in the early-morning silence.

Emilee opened the door, looking much the same as Daisy remembered: tiny, trembling, terrified. She was relieved to see that the woman was, at least physically, unharmed.

“Come in, Detective,” she said, shaking as she ushered Daisy inside.

Emilee’s home looked almost exactly like it had the last time Daisy was there a couple of weeks ago. There was no sign of a break-in, much less a struggle. Whatever had happened, it clearly didn’t include any sort of major physical altercation. In fact, the only thing that had changed seemed to be the house plant, which just looked more wilted than before. Did she ever water it?

Daisy wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the situation. Other than the live updates over the phone on her way there, there was no evidence that a crime had even occurred. And even those were dubious at best, considering the state of the witness. But as it was, she had reason to believe these ostensibly unfounded claims.

Emilee had started pacing the length of the room. She held her hands behind her back, twitching her fingers nervously. “He was here,” she muttered, though it sounded less like a statement of fact and more like an attempt to convince herself of what she had seen. “I saw him. He was here.”

“Ms. Wilcox. Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me what happened.” Daisy sat politely on the edge of the same armchair she’d sat in before; it was just as uncomfortable as she remembered. That was fine. It wouldn’t do to get too comfortable while her host was still being hunted.

“I think I’ll stand if you don’t mind.” Emilee’s voice was unsteady as she continued pacing, fueled by the leftover adrenaline from her early-morning scare. This method of working off her fear was wholly understandable, but Daisy’d be lying if she said it wasn’t distracting.

“Of course,” Daisy said, doing her best to maintain her professional mask. “Is it alright with you if I record our conversation?” She pulled out a small tape recorder and set it on the coffee table in front of her. Emilee eyed it suspiciously but didn’t say anything. “Don’t worry, it’s analog. He won’t be able to hack it and I’ll make sure it stays safe.”

Slowly, cautiously, Emilee nodded. “Okay. If you think it’ll help.”

Daisy smiled. “I do.” She readied her notebook as well, just in case, and began the interview. “Now, first, I’d like you to state your name for the record, then you can describe what happened.”

“Um, my name is Emilee Wilcox.” She was watching her feet as she paced but glanced up at Daisy for reassurance. Daisy nodded and she let out a breath. “And, uh, somebody broke into my apartment. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I decided to catch up on some work instead. Just, like, spreadsheets and stuff, you know? It was maybe three a.m. when there was a, like a ‘thump’ in the kitchen. It was really soft though, like he was wearing socks, but he wasn’t wearing socks. He had on shoes, I saw them. And I don’t have any pets or anything that would make that kind of noise and somebody’s broken in before, so I knew, you know, it had to be him, right? The guy that’s been stalking me. I was so scared, Detective. I thought maybe this was it and he was finally going to kill me.” Emilee was tense to the point Daisy was afraid she might pass out.

“Relax, Ms. Wilcox,” Daisy said. “He’s gone now. He’s not going to hurt you. What happened next?”

“I hid.” She stared at Daisy, her eyes wide with remembered terror. “I ran from my desk in here to the closet in my bedroom, shut the door, and hid. That was when I called you.”

Daisy scribbled down some notes on Emilee’s behavior: her unsteady breathing, her hurried pacing, the coherent yet inconsistent flow of her thoughts. This was a woman scared beyond her wits. “You said earlier that you saw the intruder? When was this?”

“I had to pass the kitchen on my way to the bedroom. I didn’t get a good look at him, but it was definitely a person. He was small and I think he had long hair? Actually, now that I think about it, it might have been a woman? It was dark and I really couldn’t see that well.” She shook her head, trying to parse out her memories. “I know whoever it was wearing shoes because I saw them from under the door when he was in the bedroom.”

“Do you know if he or she took anything or left anything? You’ve mentioned before that he communicates through notes and photographs.”

“He took the pictures back. I’d hidden them in my jewelry box, but they weren’t there when I checked after he left.”

“Did he take anything else? Any jewelry or anything expensive he might have found?”

“No, just the pictures.” Emilee shivered and sat down while Daisy noted the lack of financial motivation. “Detective, what does he want from me?”

Daisy hesitated. She couldn’t just tell her he wanted to kill her, but she couldn’t lie either. “The people who do things like this,” she started, choosing her words carefully, “they’re not people so much as monsters. They’re incapable of seeing other people as anything more than just playthings, toys in their convoluted games. Often they don’t even realize their victims are people at all.” She watched for Emilee’s reaction, hoping her explanation was more helpful than unnerving.

Emilee didn’t start crying, which Daisy supposed was a good sign, but she didn’t look very reassured either. It’s a tricky business, trying to help people when you know their outlook isn’t bright, and it’s not one Daisy had ever considered herself to be particularly good at. She struggled through the rest of the encounter as she attempted to assuage Emilee’s fears as best she could without making things worse.

She tried to stay focused, but a potentially major insight had cropped up as she was subconsciously working through the events of the night. She worried she might forget it if it didn’t get written down and analyzed as soon as possible; this might be important. As soon as she finished taking her notes and inspecting the apartment for evidence that didn’t exist, she was on the train headed downtown.

****

“Daisy?” Interrupted by the unexpected address, Daisy looked up from her notes to see Jon framed by the open doorway wearing a pleasant but confused smile. “You’re here early. What’s the occasion?”

“I made a possible breakthrough in the case last night,” she grinned, excited that she was finally getting a little closer to catching the Ceaseless Watcher. “I wanted to get back here as quick as I could to compare my notes.” In fact, she had gone to the library immediately after leaving Emilee, stopping only to grab a quick pastry to go from the nearest coffee shop before digging into her work.

Jon raised a curious eyebrow and came to sit across from her at the desk. “Oh? What happened?”

“Our killer made a mistake.”

“A… mistake?” He didn’t look as pleased as Daisy had expected. Rather, he looked almost worried, but Daisy simply chalked that up to the kind of fear most civilians should experience upon hearing that a potential threat isn’t as predictable as once thought. “What do you mean?”

“He let himself be seen. None of his victims have reported actually seeing him until now.” She shuffled through the stacks of papers on the desk, looking for the notepad she’d just been scribbling on. Where had it…? Ah. Jon had picked it up and was scanning it over. “That means he’s devolving,” she exclaimed, perhaps a little too excitedly, as she bent over the desk and pointed at where she had written the word ‘devolving’ in big letters and circled it multiple times.

“English, please? What does ‘devolving’ mean?”

“Basically it means he’s been thrown off his game. Something’s changed for him and now he’s not being as careful as he thinks he is. If I’m right, he’ll start getting erratic, making more mistakes.”

“And that’s a good thing? It sounds to me like that might just make him more dangerous…”

“It might,” Daisy conceded. “Though I’m not sure if Emilee can get much more careful. Poor girl barely even leaves her apartment anymore. But it’s good for us because more mistakes mean more chances for us to catch him.”

“Huh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay with this chapter. It's pretty much all plot and for some reason, my brain decided it wasn't gay or tragic enough to keep my interest. Anyways, hopefully I'll get back to a more regular writing schedule soon, now that this chapter's finally okay enough to post...
> 
> Also: I don't know if I really made it clear, but Daisy's still completely blind to Jon's involvement. She just thinks he's scared because there's an unpredictable serial killer on the loose.


	14. Oddities

A face like moonlight over a calm sea and a mind like the sparking flames of Alexandria. His touch, delicate as springtime, and his voice, soft and strong as the most expensive silk. A will of stone and a heart of gold. Like a rose: exquisite in every manner, yet dangerous if not properly understood.

These are all ways Martin could have described his love if asked, and every description could be found somewhere in his many notebooks of poetry. One of his favorite pastimes was to simply sit and watch Jon putter about, organizing books in the library, cooking little meals for the two of them, refusing help as he cleaned. Martin would watch his love and think of new and beautiful ways to describe him, scribbling down poetic lines as they floated through his mind.

He loved to translate all the many pieces of Jon into his poetry, but there was one aspect that never translated as well as he wanted it to. No matter how he thought to word it, this one thing about him that he just couldn’t describe without falling back on those short, clumsy words that he hated to use. Jon was odd. He wasn’t peculiar or unusual or bizarre, he was just odd, weird. He had strange habits and an obsession with secrets that bordered on unsettling.

For example, he was always most tense in his own home. When they were in public or at Martin’s apartment, he usually acted exactly as one would expect, but if he ever invited Martin to his little house on the outskirts of town, he’d only let himself fully relax if he was physically touching Martin. It was _odd._ This was more than just being more comfortable when in the arms of your lover, it was practically a paranoia. Though what he was paranoid about, Martin never could figure out. He had brought it up once, but Jon just gave him a weak excuse about having lots of fragile valuables and not being used to visitors.

And he had certain rooms that always stayed locked. Martin couldn’t figure out why and Jon wouldn’t tell him anything more than ‘it’s private’. He lived alone; it’s not like there were any children there to open doors and see things they shouldn’t. He had no pets either and Jon didn’t seem the type to have many visitors. There was no logical reason he could come up with to explain it.

The secretive yet lifeless house made Martin somewhat uncomfortable at times. He preferred to have Jon over to his own home or to see him in public, though that wasn’t always normal either. Like most people, they both enjoyed a spot of people watching every once in a while, but Jon had a tendency to get a little too involved. At times, Jon’s constant staring at the strangers would feel empty and almost hungry, but this wasn’t what bothered Martin. The weird thing was how he would go off on tangents, speculating on specific details of these people’s lives as if he wanted to dissect all their secrets just because he saw them once.

Jon was weird. He was a strange person. But that didn’t make Martin love him any less. If he was being honest, it might have just made him love him more. Love like a detective loves a mystery, like a child loves that particular doll that everybody else finds unsettling. Like art for the sake of art. He didn’t love him because of any particular thing he did or was, but because of all those things put together. He loved the whole of Jon, and it was a love so deep it hurt.

Though, of course, all those little individual things were nice too. The way his scarred hands fit so perfectly in his own, the slight curve of his smile whenever Martin entered the room, the rare occasion when he would laugh and how it would send ripples of warmth through Martin’s chest. He liked his tea with honey and just a splash of cream and his eyes would sparkle with fascination whenever Martin talked about himself; he loved Martin’s cat and if one of them ever needed to stay the night at the other’s house, he would always insist on letting Martin have the bed. He was sweet and intelligent and he genuinely cared about Martin’s wellbeing.

All these things and more were enough to overcome his occasional disconcerting oddity. The soulless stare he gave passing strangers, the fact that more than once Martin woke to hear what sounded almost like screaming coming from Jon’s office, and his habit of pointing out hidden security cameras all paled in comparison to how his very presence just made Martin’s heart swell. Martin was head over heels in love with Jon and nothing his beautiful librarian boyfriend or anyone else could say or do would ever change that.


	15. One Perceived Slight Too Many

Jon closed the office door behind him, making sure it was tightly locked before sinking to the floor and allowing himself to panic. She had seen him. He might as well have just turned himself in to the police. Daisy was already hot on his tail. How much longer until she put all the pieces together? He’d already made the stupid decision to help her just to see how far she would get before giving up. Now she was uncomfortably close, and this could have been exactly what she needed to make everything fall into place.

And it was all because Martin lived so damn close to his victim. How was he supposed to focus when those perfect freckles and beautiful eyes were only a couple doors down? He’d kept getting distracted by the idea that, if he wanted to, he could have just walked the short distance, knocked on his door, and kissed him. He could have done that! He was right there! If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with such painfully romantic thoughts, he would have realized that Emilee was still awake. He would have been more careful.

But he wasn’t careful. He had been reckless. He’d let himself get distracted from his work, and now he was going to have to pay the price. They were going to catch him. His secrets were going to be exposed. He needed…

Fuck. He needed help, and that meant he was going to have to call in a favor from his… what, patron? Sponsor? What do you call the man who keeps you off the radar and out of the papers in return for the occasional political favor? Jon just called him Elias, and Elias wasn’t going to be happy. He never was when Jon asked him for something.

This was _important_ though. Important enough to leave him curled up and shaking on the floor of his office, gasping for air as anxiety threatened to make him forget how to breathe. It almost felt like he was going to die, and part of him was convinced that would be better than suffering the wrath of Elias for his mistake. The man had the power to completely destroy him, and Jon didn’t want to push the limits of his patience.

No, he was terrified, but he couldn’t let himself fall apart without trying first. He had to stay alive for Martin’s sake, if nothing else. It would just crush him if anything happened to Jon. He couldn’t do that to him. So instead he had to face Elias. Any other choice might result in him losing Martin forever, and if that happened, he really would die.

He picked up his phone, hands shaking slightly, and dialed the number of the man that could either be his savior or his downfall. He waited with growing anxiety as the phone rang once, twice…

“You’ve reached the City of London police department. How may I direct your call?” A cheery-voiced receptionist answered and Jon put on the most professional persona he had.

“I’d like to speak to Captain Bouchard, please. Tell him it’s urgent.” He hoped his voice was convincingly steady.

“And who shall I say is calling?”

“Jon. He knows who I am.”

“Of course. One moment.”

He waited. It felt like ages until Elias finally picked up and he thought his chest might explode from the fear he was trying to keep suppressed. His mask was slipping and he didn’t have the dexterity to keep it on.

“Jon, what is so important that you had to interrupt me at work?”

Jon couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief when he heard Elias’ voice. Elias was far from his favorite person, but he was the only one Jon could trust with something like this, the only one who knew the depths of his sins. “I, um, I…” He swallowed, unwilling to risk his patron’s anger. “I need your help. Daisy’s getting close and I… I made a mistake.”

Jon winced as he spoke, but Elias only sighed. “What do you need.” His tone was utterly indecipherable.

He didn’t sound particularly mad though, so that was a good sign. Hopefully. “I need you to… I don’t know. Do something. Make her stop looking for me. Do whatever it is you usually do. Please, Elias, I can’t afford to be caught right now.” Jon was practically pleading at this point and tears were starting to collect in the corners of his eyes. He was completely overwhelmed; afraid of being caught, afraid of being punished, afraid of what might happen to Martin if his secrets didn’t stay buried. His thoughts were spiraling into an incomprehensible mass of worry and fear.

“Daisy, you said?”

“Daisy Tonner, yes. She’s, uh, one of yours, I think? Please, you have to help me. I don’t know what else to do.” He was well and truly shaking by now. It was all he could do just to keep his voice relatively steady and not drop the phone.

“Interesting. I was not aware she had taken it upon herself to continue her investigations.” This Elias seemed to say mostly to himself. “Oh well, no matter. I’ll look into the situation and see what I can do. For your part, Jon, just keep your head down until things smooth over. And don’t call me during work hours again.”

The phone clicked off before Jon could respond, once again leaving him in a deafening silence. Now what was he supposed to do? He glanced up at the screens that covered the walls of the little room, trying once again to steady his breathing. The black and white pictures cast everything in a dismal grey glow that reminded him of a prison cell. He hoped that wasn’t a sign of what was to come.

One screen in particular caught his eye and his breath caught. Something about the flickering image stoked the ever-present embers of rage and finally set them alight. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. An inferno of hatred blazed within him, its twisting, writhing fingers licking at his mind and pushing him further down that path he’d never before been able to avoid. Something wicked and sharp tore through his wretched soul and reminded him what he was there to do. What he was made to do.

_Kill._

That single word consumed him. He was done toying. He was done waiting. The advice he’d received not thirty seconds ago was forgotten as he watched Emilee sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of what fate held in store. How could she do that? How could she act like nothing was waiting for her there in the dark?

How dare she do that when Jon knew with such painful clarity exactly how broken they both were? Knowledge of his weaknesses and his failures kept him up at night, and yet she, someone with all the same vulnerabilities as him, she sleeps like a lamb! He could hardly see through this haze of old urges and new emotions, but she act’s like nothing’s wrong! It’s almost as if she doesn’t realize what kind of agony he’s suffering through, as if she doesn’t care.

It isn’t fair and she needs to be punished for her hubris. His hunger needs to be satisfied. The basement is cleaned and ready. Keeping his head down was out of the question.

A mad smile curled at Jon’s lips and a low, deranged laugh echoed softly through the little room. It had been too long since he’s had any long-term visitors.


	16. Permission

“Ah, Daisy, just the person I was hoping to see. Come in.”

Captain Bouchard sat primly at his desk as Daisy stepped into the small office cluttered with awards, true crime memorabilia, and myriad open projects. He was a man with a reputation. Eccentric, certainly, but damn good at his job. One of the youngest to hold the position, he had quickly risen through the ranks and was known throughout the precinct as a skilled detective with sharp eyes and a sharper mind.

Suffice it to say, Daisy was properly intimidated. Not enough to be scared away from her task though. A good cop stops at nothing to make sure justice is served, and she wasn’t about to let an impressive reputation stop her from finding whoever had taken Emilee now that she had inevitably disappeared. Not even if the man behind that reputation had already denied her request once.

“Please, have a seat.” His voice was smooth like fresh, dark coffee as he steepled his fingers in front of him and nodded to the chair across from his desk. He waited until Daisy had gotten settled before speaking again. “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been pursuing an unauthorized ‘case’ outside the station. You should know we don’t take too kindly to vigilantes here. I recommend you stop before we need to take disciplinary action.”

“I was hoping to talk to you about that, actually.” There was no use denying her extracurricular research, though the term ‘vigilante’ struck her as a bit extreme. “It’s the same case I came to you with a couple of months ago. You said I needed more evidence before you’d consider opening an official investigation, so that’s what I’ve been doing: gathering evidence.”

“Is that so? And how has that been going?”

“Well. It’s been going well.” She slid the files in her hands over to him, avoiding too much eye-contact. It was easier to concentrate when she didn’t keep reminding herself of how much experience he held over her. “There’s been a recent disappearance that matches the pattern: a woman named Emilee Wilcox. The Ceaseless Watcher still hasn’t left any physical evidence, but Emilee’s descriptions of her experiences exactly mirror those of his previous victims. She was reported missing two days ago by a neighbor, Martin Blackwood. Sir, I spoke with Ms. Wilcox personally and I feel it would be morally wrong if I were to leave her disappearance uninvestigated, so that’s what I plan to do, with or without your approval.”

“I see.” Elias had been casually flipping through the papers she had given him while she spoke, but now he set them down and turned to look Daisy directly in the eye. “Very well, you may use police resources to continue your investigations, but, as you still have no real evidence, you will not be granted the assistance of a team. As soon as you can bring me something solid, I will rethink my offer. If your other work falters because of this, I will immediately withdraw permission to use official resources for this case. You may go.”

****

Daisy wasn’t sure what to make of the short encounter. It felt like she should have had to fight her case more, defend her decisions, _something_. Not just get a rap on the knuckles and sent away with more freedom than she’d started with. But whatever more she might have wanted to say was silenced by Elias’s obvious body language and expression telling her the meeting was over. Her only choices were to leave with her dignity or stay and be flatly ignored.

Something was wrong here. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about Elias’ demeanor towards the whole Ceaseless Watcher case struck her as off. There was a veritable serial killer on the loose in his precinct and he didn’t seem at all worried. It was almost as though he was more concerned about her than the case.

It didn’t matter, Daisy thought, shaking her head to clear away the idea. What mattered was that she had a case, she had resources, and she knew what she needed to do next. Her weird boss was inconsequential anymore. What had to happen now was she needed to follow Emilee’s trail. Find the clues, discover where she went, and save the day. Be the hero and bring justice to the villain that had taken her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday I will finish this, I promise. But I've learned very quickly that writing cop stories is a lot harder than watching them on tv...


	17. Something Unexpected and Grotesque

“Jon, how much further are we going? I don’t mean to complain, but I’m not exactly in shape to go hiking…”

“We’re almost there, I promise.” Jon stopped where he was and put his hand up like a visor, though with the sunlight being muted by the thick canopy of leaves as it was, the shade was likely unnecessary. When Martin caught up to him out of breath, having been trailing a few feet behind, he took his hand instinctively. “I can see it from here. Are you sure you don’t want me to carry anything?”

“No,” Martin said, setting his jaw defiantly, “I’ve got it.” Jon was taking him on a picnic date in the nearby national park and he was determined to show him how strong and tough he could be. Maybe he was falling into the trap of society’s views on masculinity, but Jon deserved a boyfriend who could at the very least handle hiking a little ways through the woods to go on a picnic.

Jon was right; it wasn’t that much further. After about a minute or two more of tramping through sticks and damp earth, the couple broke through into a clearing. It was about twenty feet across and absolutely covered in wildflowers. How Jon ever found the place was a mystery, considering how secluded it was, but it was beautiful. It took Martin’s breath away.

He had to take a moment just to take it all in. This was very romantic, enough to make him forget he was actually supposed to be doing things, though he was quickly pulled from his awed stupor by Jon gently taking the picnic basket from his arm. 

“Why don’t you catch your breath a bit while I set up the blanket,” Jon hummed. Without waiting for a response, he reached up to kiss his cheek before turning to find a dry spot for their picnic.

Martin blushed. He couldn’t help it; he blushed every time Jon kissed him, or even just touched his arm unexpectedly. He was smitten by this man who was so, so good to him.

He took the opportunity to explore a bit while he waited. Jon had a tendency to get fussy if things weren’t exactly how he wanted them, so he figured it might be a while. They were notably deep into the woods and the underbrush around the clearing was thick - too thick to see much past the tree line. It made him feel like they were really alone out there.

For a while he busied himself with sifting through the flowers, finding the very best ones to make a little bouquet for Jon. He thought it was very cute, with pink and blue and pale yellow petals. Much cuter than what he found next…

What he picked up was _supposed_ to be a stick, because sticks are cool and fun to pick up. Unfortunately, the long, sun-bleached object wasn’t so much branch as brachium. An arm bone. A human arm, just like his own.

“… Jon?” Martin tried to keep the waver out of his voice so as not to worry Jon too much. It’s just human remains - nothing to be freaked out over, right? “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“What is it?” Jon sounded a little concerned as he walked over to where Martin was stood frozen to the spot, but he was clearly still in date mode, a mindset Martin had long since abandoned in the face of his discovery.

Martin didn’t realize it until Jon put a gentle hand on his back, but he was shaking quite a bit. He had to work his mouth for what felt like ages before he could get the words to come out. “A bone.” He blinked and turned to his date. 

“A what?”

“A bone.” The more he said it, the more real it became. “Like from a person.” Shit. Why the hell was he doing holding a dead man’s bone in the middle of a forest while on a date? His breath sped up as the realization set in. “Jon, we have to call the police.”

Jon froze. “No.”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s probably just an animal bone. I find those around here all the time.” Jon was being very quiet. “They often look similar to human, especially when the fur is gone. We don’t need to call the police.”

“It’s the same size as my arm! Please, what if you’re wrong? We can’t risk it if somebody died here!” He was in full panic mode now; he hadn’t come here expecting to find bones. This wasn’t how this date was supposed to go.

“I promise, love. It’s nothing to be worried about. I’m sure it’s just a deer or something. Why don’t you just put that down and we’ll forget about it.”

“No, I…” Martin shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jon, but I need to be sure. I won’t call the police, but I’m calling Daisy.”

“Daisy? Why? She _is_ the police.”

“It’s just as a friend. She’ll know what to do.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone with his free hand to dial Daisy's number. Why he was still holding the bone in the other was unclear, but he felt like something bad might happen if he put it down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A two-part scene. As a treat. ;)


	18. Calling in the Authorities

_“Shut up shut UP!”_

_The screams were piercing and Jon was already on edge. This guy was supposed to be a hardened criminal; why was he crying like a goddamn toddler? Jon couldn’t take it anymore. One flick of the knife was all it took. Finally, the racket stopped as the man choked on the blood from his slit throat. Finally, he was dead and Jon was free to stew in bloody, hateful silence._

****

Robert Orville, wanted by the police for… various things, had disappeared mysteriously about five years ago. Nobody knew he had been killed, disarticulated, and left to rot deep in the woods. Nobody but Jon, who now had to deal with the fact that his boyfriend was holding the radius of the man and the police were on their way.

Or, at least, Daisy was on her way. Martin had repeatedly assured him she was coming only as a friend, but that was just as bad. Worse, maybe, because she was on Jon’s trail specifically. She was looking for these particular bones because he told her to; he’s been guiding her towards himself for months now and for what? He doesn’t really want to be caught, does he?

Unfortunately, it’s starting to look more and more like he subconsciously does. Who other than a self-destructive idiot helps the police follow their own trail? Who lets themself get seen by their victim and potentially identified? Who brings their date to their dumpsite? God, he’s gotten sloppy. 

When Daisy got there, it was straight to work. All pleasantries were skipped beyond a quick hello before she started asking questions and taking pictures. Where did you find it? Were there any others? How long ago did you find it? Legal reasons, she said. If this was a crime scene (which she seemed to be pretty sure it was) then everything needed to be recorded as is before they start touching things.

This was bad. It left Jon with no room for misdirection or evidence tampering to keep himself out of the spotlight. There was only one thing he could think to do. “Why don’t you take it down to the forestry station? I’m sure somebody there will be able to confirm it’s just an animal’s bone.” Yes, it would mean more police involvement, but at least it might give him enough time to make sure there was nothing else incriminating in the nearby underbrush.

“Good idea,” Daisy said with a soft smile. At least now she was trying to be nice. “We should do that immediately. Martin?”

“Ah, yes?” He seemed caught off guard by the address.

“Care to hand over the evidence now?” She held out an empty evidence bag. “You can’t keep holding that bone forever.”

“Oh!” Evidently, Martin had forgotten he was still holding it. “Sorry. Yes. Ew, I… don’t know why I was holding that.” He dropped the bone into the bag and Daisy sealed it.

“It’s not an issue,” she said, watching him with an unreadable expression. “You should come to the station with me. Jon, if you’ll stay here and make sure nothing else happens before we get back?”

“Will you be okay by yourself?”  
Jon started. He had gotten caught up in his thoughts again and hadn’t been closely paying attention. “What? Yes, I’ll be fine. I can hold down the fort until you get back.” He reached out to squeeze Martin’s hand, face softening. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Now, this was a good thing. Why Daisy wanted Martin to join her and not him, Jon had no idea, but it certainly worked out in his favor. As soon as he was sure they were out of earshot, he got to work. If one bone made it out into the clearing, there had to be more, dragged out from the myriad little hiding places he’d found. At least they were guaranteed not to find an entire body - he’d made sure of that when he cut apart the remains and scattered the pieces.

“God, you’re an idiot, Jon,” he muttered to himself as he shuffled through the underbrush, scanning for bones. “This is why we don’t let people get close, remember? You get soft. You let nice people like Elias and Martin get under your skin and you get messy.” He found a small bone and chucked it far out into the woods with a snarl. “You can’t keep letting him come over when there’s a woman tied up in your basement or else some bones will be the least of your problems. You remember what happened last time, don’t you? When Elias got a job as a fucking cop and nearly turned you in? Or are you too smitten with that little poet to see straight?”

Stop that. Jon shook his head and abandoned his monologue. He was smitten with Martin, but that didn’t have to keep clouding his judgment. He was smart, he could keep the two worlds separate. He could have his cake and eat it too. But first, he had to get through this issue with the bones.

His timing couldn’t have been more perfect when he got done. Not ten seconds after he stepped back into the clearing, sure there were no bones left, Martin returned with Daisy and a uniformed stranger in tow.

“Afternoon,” the park ranger said, nodding briefly to Jon before turning back to Martin. “Can you show me where you found the bone, sir?”

“Yeah, it was, uh, right over here.” Jon could hear the waver in his voice that Martin was trying to hide as he guided the ranger to the opposite edge of the clearing. “I didn’t see any others, just… just the one.”

The ranger knelt down and surveyed the area. “We don’t have anything bigger than the occasional deer in these parts, and that bone of yours looks heftier than what I’d expect from a deer. It might be best,” he said, standing back up and turning to face the trio, “if we called in the experts. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s brought us human remains from around here.”

“Really?” Martin grabbed at Jon’s hand, obviously trying to hide how terrified he was.

“Yeah, about a year ago, some kids found a femur about a mile away from here. Nothing ever came of it.” The ranger shrugged. “You two can go home if you want. We’ll contact you if we need anything more. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.”

It felt a bit dismissive, but Jon was glad for the chance to leave and Martin clearly was too. He didn’t want to have to stay any longer than he had to. After grabbing the picnic stuff, he returned to Martin and took his hand back. “Are you okay, love?”

“Yeah, I’m…” Martin was practically shaking. “Jon, can I stay with you tonight?”

“Of course. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. Anything you need.” Jon leaned his head comfortingly on his boyfriend’s shoulder and led him back to civilization. The woman in his basement would have to starve for the night. There were more important things he needed to take care of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, that means Elias is Jon's ex ;)


End file.
